AT LEAST one retired employee of the Central Bank is receiving a pension of more than €205,000 per year, according to the Department of Finance.
Three other retired personnel from the Central Bank are receiving pensions of more than €155,000 per year.
The details of the pensions were released by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in response to a parliamentary question from the Labour Party’s Róisín Shortall.
The Department of Finance said yesterday it could not provide details of the identities of the persons concerned.
Last week The Irish Timesrevealed that there are 10 people receiving pensions of more than €135,000 from the Office of the Paymaster General, which makes pension payments to retired civil servants and former office holders such as ministers and judges.
The new figures relate to pensions paid by public sector bodies that come under the remit of the Department of Finance rather than the Office of the Paymaster General.
Mr Lenihan said the highest-paid public sector pensioners in each of the public bodies under his department’s remit, and whose pensions were not paid by the Office of the Paymaster General, were receiving €205,043 from the Central Bank, €99,757 from the Economic and Social Research Institute and €88,000 from the Institute of Public Administration.
The Minister also signalled the remuneration package for the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) head would in future be published annually.
“The position regarding the NTMA is that since its inception the remuneration packages of all National Treasury Management Agency staff, including staff assigned to associated bodies, have been negotiated on an individual contract basis and are confidential.
“In line with the recommendation in the code of practice for the governance of State bodies that State bodies publish the salary of the chief executive officer in their annual report, it is the chief executive’s intention to publish details of his remuneration in future NTMA annual reports”.
Mr Lenihan said that there were 13 retired personnel receiving gross pensions of more than €95,000 from public bodies under the remit of the Department of Finance rather than through the Office of the Paymaster General.
Forty-nine former staff in such public bodies were in receipt of pensions of between €15,000 per year and €74,999, the Minister said.
He added that there were 31 former staff of these bodies receiving pensions of up to €14,999.