PAY CUT:THE GOVERNMENT will not say until budget day next month whether TDs elected for the first time in the forthcoming general election will be paid 10 per cent less than those who are currently serving.
The Government announced in its four-year plan on Wednesday that there would be a 10 per cent reduction in pay for new entrants to the public service.
However, the Department of Finance said yesterday that decisions relating to whom the new reductions would apply would not be announced until the budget next month.
It is understood that one difficulty is that the pay of TDs is linked to that of principal officers in the Civil Service. Principal officer is not an entry grade in the Civil Service. Therefore the pay of newly elected TDs could not be reduced without breaking the link with principal officers, which has been in place for several years.
TDs have experienced pay cuts along with all other public service staff over the last year or so.
They are currently paid about €90,000 per year.
The reduced salary scale for new entrants, as well as the plan to significantly cut the numbers of staff employed across the public service, forms part of a move by the Government to scale back the public service pay bill by €1.2 billion by 2014.
The Government wants to cut public service numbers by about 3,300 annually in the years ahead.
A new pension scheme for new entrants to the public service is also to be introduced.