SIXTEEN EMPLOYEES of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) are being paid more than €200,000 per year.
Details of pay scales, which have been given to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee in recent days, also show that a further 22 staff are receiving between €150,000 and €200,000 annually.
A further 65 people in the NTMA have salaries between €100,000 and €150,000 while 202 are receiving incomes of up to €100,000.
The NTMA manages assets and liabilities on behalf of the Government and was established at the end of 1990 to borrow for the State and manage the national debt.
The pay levels were disclosed as part of an investigation by the committee into remuneration for senior staff in the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Nama was established to take over and manage toxic land and development assets from the banking sector.
Staff assigned to work in Nama are employees of the NTMA.
In a letter to the committee, the NTMA said no general grades or pay scales existed in its remuneration structure and that staff were on individually-negotiated contracts.
“The legislation which set up the National Treasury Management Agency positioned it outside the wider public service structures with operational freedom to negotiate market competitive salaries so that it would have, for example, the flexibility to recruit specialists in mid-career from the private sector,” the correspondence noted.
The NTMA said the absence of a grading structure meant it could not provide the information sought by the committee on a “pay grade” basis.
Committee chairman Bernard Allen last night strongly criticised the letter sent by the NTMA. He said that it had sought to evade the questions on remuneration for top-level staff in Nama.
Mr Allen said the committee had replied to the agency pointing out that it was very unhappy with the correspondence.
He said Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh had been recalled by the committee for a hearing in early January.
“We wanted to get some idea of the level of remuneration for top officials in Nama. We did not want personalised information and would have accepted anonymised data. However, this is too general. It is evading the questions with regard to salaries.”
It emerged earlier this year that former head of the NTMA Michael Somers had received more than €1 million in 2008.
Dr Somers’s package included a salary of €565,000, €35,000 for his work as a member of the National Pension Reserve Fund commission and €403,000 bonus.
