Just out of curiosity

From Thursday’s Irish Times, it seems that Bertie’s program manager, Gerry Hickey, is conducting some of the outreach to potential coalition partners –

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have also been in contact with the five Independent TDs. One, Finian McGrath, confirmed to The Irish Times that he had met the Taoiseach’s programme manager, Gerry Hickey, and given him a document outlining the basis on which he was prepared to do a deal.

The question is: should the taxpayer be paying for his time on that work?

Gerry Hickey is paid €225,410 a year. His salary is linked to that of top civil servants, and thus he gets all the benchmarking pay raises. Last month, Bertie rationalised the programme manager and special adviser positions as follows -

The Taoiseach says the primary function of the special advisers is to “monitor, facilitate and help secure the achievement of Government objectives and to ensure effective co-ordination in the implementation of the Programme for Government”.

“They are also tasked with giving me advice and keeping me informed on a wide range of issues, including business, financial, economic, political, administrative and media matters and performing such other functions as may be directed by me, from time to time,” he told Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan.

Even allowing for this very generous definition for what is clearly a graft of spinners and handlers onto the existing civil service system, it seems pretty clear that these are services intended to be provided to the current government, and not to the party political matter of forming the next one. Shouldn’t Hickey be sending his time sheets to Fianna Fáil for this work?