THE CHIEF executive of one of the State’s non-commercial State bodies is to repay several thousand euros which was overpaid to her in salary for almost two years.
The board of the State’s national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey Ireland, did not apply pay cuts of about 8 per cent to the salary of its chief executive Geraldine Ruane under the terms of financial emergency legislation which came into force at the beginning of 2010.
Pay reductions were introduced for other staff in the agency.
The failure by the board to cut the pay of the chief executive has led to significant friction with the Department of Finance – latterly the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform – over the last 18 months or so.
The Department of Public Expenditure maintained that not only must the pay cut be implemented but that it had to be backdated to January 2010 and the overpayments involved repaid in full by December 31st this year.
The board, which is chaired by the former secretary general of the Department of Enterprise and Employment Kevin Bonner, had contended that given the commercial mandate set down for Ordnance Survey Ireland in legislation, the financial emergency legislation could not apply to the salary and contract arrangements of its chief executive.
The Department of Finance and more recently the Department of Public Expenditure has strongly rejected this stance and argued that the application of the cuts under the financial emergency legislation was not arbitrary.
In a letter sent to the chairman last July, the secretary general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform Robert Watt said he was quite at a loss over why correspondence was still continuing about the introduction of pay cuts for the chief executive.
He said that it had been made clear in numerous letters to the board over the previous 18 months that the agency was a public service body under the meaning of the financial emergency legislation and that its chief executive officer was considered to be a public servant.
“In this context, section 2 of the Act applies and Ordnance Survey Ireland is under a statutory obligation, in the absence of an exemption granted by the Minister for Finance in accordance with section 6, to apply the relevant pay reductions with effect from January 1st, 2010, notwithstanding any previous ‘written agreement or contractual arrangement’ entered into with the current CEO.”
Mr Watt said the type of contract the board of the agency had given to Ms Ruane was “more akin to contracts awarded to chief executives in commercial State companies”, but that this had no bearing on the requirement to implement the pay cuts under the legislation.