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Origins of Ministerial Pensions
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In 1938 a couple of major things happened: a new Constitution became the fundamental law of this country, the British gave back the Treaty Ports and the ‘Ministers and Parliamentary Office Bill’ introduced the concept of Ministerial Pensions.
The salaries paid to office holders had been a contentious issue for some time. In the 1932 election campaign, Fianna Fail made Ministerial salaries an election issue. No man in Ministerial Office or the Civil Service was worth more than a £1,000 a year, De Valera had declared at his party’s Ard Fheis the previous year. As a populist platform, the charge that the Cumann Na nGaedheal government had been robbing the people blind for the previous decade of Independence undoubtedly went down well with the electorate.
Thus, one of De Valera’s first acts in March 1932 when he became President of the Executive Council, as it was then called, was to reduce his own salary from £2,500 to £1,500, Ministerial Salaries from £1,500 to £1,000 and the salaries of Parliamentary Secretaries (equivalent to today’s Junior Ministers) from £1,100 to £900.
Even though the payments were tax free, it didn’t take long for the Executive to discover that the reductions had been ill-advised.
“I want to emphasise that those salaries have been found to be quite insufficient to permit a Minister to meet the demands which are made upon him,” the then Minister for Finance, Sean MacEntee, informed the House as he introduced the 1938 Bill to restore the Executive salaries to their pre-1932 levels.
A Commission had been appointed to examine the salary payable to office holders and the 1938 Bill was largely based on its report. It was this Commission, representative of all the Dail parties and other experts, that put forward the then novel idea of Ministerial pensions, payable after three years in office.
For the fun of it, I’ve abstracted a couple of quotes from the debate on the pensions aspect of the Bill :
“Such provision as is now proposed,” MacEntee said “would help, firstly, to reduce the extent of the financial sacrifice which is involved in taking ministerial or parliamentary office because of the enforced severance of all active connection with the office-holder’s original occupation or profession, and because of the impracticability during the years of office of making any provision for the future of himself and his family. The severity of this sacrifice may often only be realised after the cesser of office. “
He added: “The Committee of Inquiry recommended the grant of pensions, not merely for the reasons to which I have referred, but as an inducement towards retaining in political life ex-Ministers who have gained, in the responsibilities of office, a special knowledge of public affairs and a firsthand experience of public administration which makes them, when not in office, the most valuable members of the Oireachtas.”
The fate awaiting an ex-minister , according to Cummann Na nGaedheal’s Dr. T.F. O’ h’Uiginn, was to be greatly pitied.
“All Parties at least will believe this,” O’ h’Uiginn said, “that after a man has ceased to be a Minister, when his political fortunes are down, when his political Party is down, he is the one man in all Ireland who can be regarded as unemployable. In other countries the same thing does not prevail. In other countries when a man ceases to be a Minister, having had administrative experience, having had years of experience in dealing with statistics and trade and finance, every big corporation, every big industrial board is running after him to get him on their board of directors, but in our country our experience has been that, whether a man belongs to the commercial or professional classes, certainly for years after he has become an ex-Minister he is definitely untouchable. His cause is down. His Party is unpopular. We cannot all the time expect people to serve the State only by making the very gravest sacrifices.”
And in case that wasn’t sufficiently heartrending, he went on: “Do any of the critics of the principle contained in this Bill really make allowance for the strain under which Ministers have lived in the past, for the strain under which they live at the moment, or the strain under which they will always live? Does anyone make allowance for the amount of mental energy that is used up in a few years in a Government Front Bench? Does anyone make allowance for the amount by which a life is shortened by the strain and responsibility?”
It was choice between proper salaries and pensions or turning the Irish Parliament “ into a playground only for the rich,” he said.
And so the principle of Ministerial pensions came to be introduced. Nothing spectacular involved here, just relatively modest payments of between £200-£500. You have to wonder, 70 odd years down the line, what these founding fathers of our State and our parliamentary system would have made of today’s political gravy train.
If there ever was any, the justification for paying pensions to sitting Oireachtas members has long since disappeared. Although he had announced that this particular party was over in the April 2009 Budget, the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, was prevented by legal advice from bringing the practice to an end, although he was able to reduce the amounts being paid out.
At the beginning of 2009 there were 36 sitting TDs and Senators drawing Ministerial pensions. Twenty of them gave them up, some more quickly than others. Up to yesterday there were sixteen left, now reduced to fifteen following Emmet Stagg’s announcement earlier today.
Those who voluntarily relinquished their entitlement to a Ministerial pension do not deserve any credit whatsoever. Many of them had been happily lodging the cheques into their bank accounts for the past decade, and more. They’ve already had their fun in the playground. The sudden discovery that it’s not acceptable any more does not entitle them to any approval from anybody for their so-called ‘sacrifice’.
How much would a “relatively modest” £200-£500 be worth in 2010?
Nice post Veronica. I think a few politicians have surfaced in recent days who (very) relucatantly accepted that perhaps these pensions should be stopped, but then they qualified this by ringing out a note of victimhood in pointing out that other workers who can take early retirement can earn their salaries in their new job and continue to draw down their pensions.
Their half-arsed (and patently selfish) reasoning illustrates what we already know about those who hold public office in Ireland: they do not feel any sense of duty to the republic, they do not have a genuine sense of being in the service of citizens, they have no conception of the special nature of public office, they don’t have a wider sense of responsibility to honour the values of a constitution.
In the main, our political elite show no particular awareness of or concern for the meaning of democracy.
It is no suprise then that there is indeed a gravy train. No surprise that office holders fail to distinguish between public and private. No surprise that one recent Taoiseach lived in manor, behaved like a lord, and considered the apparatus of state, from police to funding, to be at his personal and political service. No surprise that another more recent Taoiseach saw nothing wrong with taking large amounts of cash and evidently considered that courts, tribunals, and the media were simply nuiscances that kept him from doing what he liked. No surprise either that a chair of the oireachtas saw himself as the victim when he had to leave office after spending extra-ordinary amounts of tax payers money on endless junkets.
This is what you get when there is no genuine sense of public service, no thorough concept and respect for democracy. You get a self-indulgent, pathetic, corrupt, irresponsible, little elite who run your country into the ground.
Tomaltach,
Well said! Seems like the rest of the hypocrites are falling over themselves like skittles today to ‘give up’ their pensions.
Gerard,
I don’t know how to calculate the relative purchasing power today of what became known as the ‘Irish pound’ in 1938. But in UK terms £200 then would have a relative purchasing power of about £6,000 now. At a guess, maybe 20 times might be appropraite in an Irish context since we had prolonged periods of high inflation relative to the UK and the Irish pound was worth less than the £ Sterling?(I think – surely some boffin out there knows all about this?) Maybe, €4000 or so? Sorry, purely speculative!
I think the problem is wider than serving TDs drawing pensions, many retired public servants and retired TDs , particularly highly skilled ones , continue to work on boards of banks, quangos, act as consultants to state bodies,international positions, teachers doing locums, barristers doing state work, retired judges heading enquiries ,PR etc ,etc.One cannot object to state pensioners working in the private sector but state pensioners drawing a second state payment for work which may be related to experience and knowledge gained in the employment of the state in the first place gives a bad taste.
Betty,
I think the solution ot the problem you identify is simple : deduct the salary equivalent that ex-office holders receive in their new post, whether it’s private or public sector, from the State pension entitlement for as long as they hold such a post. Otherwise you’re saying they’re fit for nothing except growing roses. Now in some cases that may well be true, but not in all!
I don’t think the solution is simple. For instance, the pension of state general operatives is modest and many have to supplement that pension by working , usually part time –school bus runs, caretakers, casual labourers,general gofors etc so you can’t deduct their pay from their pension–I know a few who are working to help pay for treatment for special needs granchildren.If the combined incomes are high it could probably be dealt with by taxation.The real sore point is two state payments–a nice consultancy or expresidents or taoisachs who secured political positions as a result of their high profile, or retired civil servants appointed to state boards as I mentioned–there is an interesting letter from a Nigel Cooke in today’s Irish Times–I don’t know how to do links.
For instance, the pension of state general operatives is modest and many have to supplement that pension by working
First, though, you need to explain to poor Veronica what a G.O. is, and how they’re not (shock, horror) well-paid or enjoying good conditions. And this may be the hardest step of all, to patiently educate the unwilling on who and what the public sector actually are.