Hospital board seeks changes to chief executive pay scales

A board member of the State's largest children's hospital, Our Lady's in Crumlin, has said the Health Service Executive salary scale for chief executives is not appropriate and needs to be changed.

Cllr Ruairi McGinley, who sits on the board of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital and St James’s Hospital Dublin, also said he would be dismayed if the controversy around top-up payments for senior executives impacted on fundraising.

According to Department of Health files the chief executive of Our Lady's Hospital, Lorcan Birthistle, was receiving total remuneration of €140,808 of which €30,000 was described as a "privately funded allowance".

The income stream used to fund this allowance is generated from profits from shops on the hospital campus.

"In terms of the commercial revenue being used to top it up to a reasonable rate, and a reasonable rate is a rate that would have applied to other CEOs of Dublin hospitals, I don't have an issue with that myself," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

He described the HSE’s salary scale as inappropriate.

“My first point of call would be to change the HSE’s scale, but my second point would be to make a business case that says the current salary is justified.”

Mr McGinley said he was certain “€110,000 is not an appropriate salary for a chief executive of a national children’s hospital.”

He said no one in the public service should earn more than the Taoiseach’s salary of €185,000 and added that the salary of the chief executive at Crumlin hospital was at was “at the lowest end of any of the numbers that have appeared”.

Mr McGinley said he hoped the publicity around top-up payments would not

negatively impact on fundraising.

“The salaries have been approved by the board, it is a limited company we do have responsibilities totally separate to the Minister,” he said.

Mr McGinley said he would not support trying to recoup top up payments paid to the chief executive.

He added that the board would not have dealt with the chief executive’s salary and said it would have been appointed before his term on the board.

“The issue I would have is people in the public service earning more than the Taoiseach salary at €185,000 and I would reduce all salaries above this level.”

Details of the payment emerged in confidential Department of Health files obtained by The Irish Times which set out publicly for the first time the total amount, including top-up payments, made to individual members of senior management across State-funded voluntary hospitals and health agencies.