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Numbers of the day
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€32,471.40: The average annual earnings of an adult male industrial worker in Ireland.
€38,000: Bertie Ahern’s pay raise for 2008.
Sources below.
Average annual industrial earnings: the weekly earnings times 52.
Bertie’s pay raise: RTE story on the pay review report.
UPDATE: Here’s the pay review itself in all its insanity. Two telling quotes –
We were also advised of the additions to salary applicable to private sector posts. The typical remuneration package, in addition to base salary, can comprise a mix of a performance-related bonus, long-term incentives, share options and a car. The most significant addition to salary in the case of the private sector posts relates to
performance bonuses …
The pressures on political office holders are considerable. The increasing demands and
growing complexity of work which we refer to in relation to top public servants apply to office holders also, probably with even greater force. Political office holders are also subject to levels of accountability which are unique. Apart from their accountability to the Oireachtas, they have an accountability to the electorate which entails standing for election at regular intervals in their capacity as members of the Dail or Seanad.
They also want credit for not having used CEO salaries as part of the comparator group. And for not directly comparing salaries of Ministers to that of the private sector. But since they base the Ministerial salaries on those of senior civil servants, which they do set based on private sector, this is a meaningless concession.
But the core lunacy of this approach is that it is using private sector salaries, which are performance based, to set the salaries of senior civil servants and Ministers who have (a) freely chosen to enter those careers and (b) have no pay-for-performance component to their salaries.
A Random Walk has another comparison, plus additional thoughts from Gavin.
What’s the story with pensions? Don’t TDs have a fantastic pension setup (fixed pension for life at close to the TD’s salary I think)? Whereas private sector business people finance their own pension to a larger extent?
i.e. I suspect that their is an obvious and deliberate mis-valuation in the benchmarking.
I want to know the complete financial outlook for someone who spends one term and TD and retires, compared to someone who spends 5 years as head of a large company.
If there was ever a reason for getting rid of TD’s, this has to be it.
Nor is there any chance of the Opposition voting against this preposterous motion.
As it is said “Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas” and Enda & Eamonn will want all that lovely loot – and the enormous perks (AND access to “interest free loans” & personal donations).
Maybe a cabinet of 6 at €200,000 + each, but not the mob that Ahern has drafted in to warm their collective arses on the bench, doing sweet f-all.
So it reverts to the shareholders of Ireland Inc. – WE who pay their bloated wages and expenses – to exercise our financial muscle and act.
Some years ago, the PAYE Sector decided enough was enough and withheld their taxes. CEO’s of companies in the exposed private sector will have no problems in lending them their support.
It is time that the shareholders of Ireland Inc. demanded Value For Money.
NOW.
The report made an attempt to value pensions. They said that the public sector pension (because it’s defined benefit plus various other features) is worth an additional 15 percent of salary. But as the Irish Times explained today, the review group then did a sleight of hand where they bumped up the private sector comparator salary by 15 percent (for an allegedly different reason) and then deducted the 15 percent benefit from that. I believe that Aaron is correct that the TD pension is even more generous because it’s defined benefit with much shorter pay-in period than the civil servant pension but I don’t know the details.
Seeing him yesterday on the door-step Bertie is sickly arrogant. This pay rise is following a rise of 22% in 2000 and 7.5% in 2005. another 14% in 2007 suggests that he is just like those corporate execs feeding off huge expenses and pay.
The state is different bertie, your not in business, we arent employees. He is the employee and 300k is a sick sum for someone supposed to be “of the people”
Corporate execs provide added value; they create jobs that are also value added; they find export markets; they plough back profits into research & development; they harness the resources of the country.
They may appear to be overpaid – and some are – but, unlike many of those marking time until their fireproof pension arrives – they are not parasites.
And many of that same number of parasites, in the sheltered public sector, take early retirement to study for the Bar or Accountancy (a favoured choice for Revenue Inspectors)to pursue a second lucrative career, using their insider information.
The Government – our employees (which they oft-times forget when they complain about our lack of respect for their high office)- in contradistinction to those CEO’s – waste the resources of this country, both natural – and the unnatural taxes that they extract from the working sector & waste on unnecessary foreign travel; expensive motor cars; dreams of billion Euro Football Bowls and well-meaning, yet stupid, social programmes.
An old lady was recently asked, as she left a well known North Dublin chain store, whether she thought Bertie was good value for money.
“He’s a lovely man,” she said, ” worth every penny.”
How can one win against such blind stupidity – and ignorance of the realities of the Banana Republic that Ireland has become?
The majority of dynamic people end up in the private sector because they have been wage outlooks. If governments the world over paid politicians better, they might entice a wider spectrum of people. Regardless of what you think of the recent rises, you can’t disagree that if their pay was coupled with other private sector mainstays like REAL performance verification, nobody would disagree with politicians getting paid serious money.