Higgins accused over bonus stance

MINISTER FOR Finance Michael Noonan has accused Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins and People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett of inconsistency in a row over non-payment of bonuses to staff at the former EBS building society.

Workers at the financial institution, now owned by the State, are planning a one-day strike on Tuesday over the refusal by the Department of Finance to sanction a traditional Christmas bonus to all employees.

Mr Noonan said in the Dáil he had the “utmost sympathy” for EBS staff about the timing of the announcement that the so-called 13th month payment would not be made on the day before it was due.

“This does not reflect well on management and should not have happened,” he said. He pointed out that the payment was described as a Christmas bonus in the contracts of the staff members affected, and the terms of the State’s capital investment in AIB, with which the EBS has merged, made clear in July “that no bonuses whatsoever could be paid or awarded”.

He acknowledged the “sacrifices made by employees, both public and private, in this battle for survival of the nation” but it is not unjustified for a bank which the State has rescued to withdraw a Christmas bonus.

Mr Higgins said the department was “going after the little people”. The prohibition of bank bonuses was “enthusiastically supported” when it related to “high flyers and fat cats who devastated our economy”. But the bonuses in this case were for employees on €26,000 a year. Clerical staff on €34,000 a year were losing a gross bonus of €2,600.

Mr Noonan said Mr Higgins “has lectured me and the Taoiseach on several occasions” and had made “very strong advocacy” that no bonuses should be paid in the banks while taxpayers were bailing them out.

Mr Boyd Barrett said they were referring to bonuses for people at the top, and not the workers. The Minister said if the Opposition were demanding no bonuses be paid to bank staff because they were using taxpayers’ money, they could not “come back and demand the payment of bonuses”.

He asked: “Do you want us to pay bonuses to the people you select?”