MINISTER FOR Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin wanted to pay his own special adviser a salary of more than €133,600 but was advised not to award such a high wage, Freedom of Information (FoI) documents reveal.
The proposed salary would have made Ronan O’Brien, who worked for Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn when he was Labour leader, the best-paid Government adviser outside the Department of the Taoiseach. Mr O’Brien’s salary was eventually settled at €114,000, still well above the recommended €92,672 cap.
A remuneration package of €133,605 had already been approved by Mr Howlin and Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, when the advice from Department of Finance officials was received in April 2011.
It cautioned the figure of €133,605 “could set an unwelcome precedent for future requests for exceptions” and pointed out Mr Howlin himself had recently argued against allowing the special adviser to Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton a wage exceeding the limit.
This was a reference to Ciarán Conlon, who eventually received €127,000 following an intervention from Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
The advice to Mr Howlin, who is tasked with reducing costs in the public sector, came from the Department of Finance’s administration budget section, which formulated stricter guidelines on special advisers to Ministers after the general election.
The guidelines stipulated special advisers should usually be paid €80,051, bringing them into line with the first point of the salary scale applying to standard principal officer positions in the Civil Service, although they could be paid up to €92,672 – the highest point on the principal officer scale – if they had been earning more than the minimum previously.
The Government also decided that “in exceptional cases” a salary rate above the cap could be sanctioned by Mr Noonan and Mr Howlin.
Referring to the proposed salary of €133,605 for Mr Howlin’s adviser, the advice from officials stated: “[G]iven the intense media interest in ministerial appointees and the high probability that the Ministers will be required to answer PQs [parliamentary questions] in the Dáil regarding the remuneration levels in particular, it is important to signal that some of the proposals as outlined may leave this department and the Ministers open to criticism, as well as setting unwelcome precedents in the sanctioning of personal appointees.”
The €114,000 rate was agreed in May. Mr O’Brien was previously director of communications and marketing at Chartered Accountants Ireland. Mr Howlin’s other adviser, Anne Byrne, is on a salary of €83,337.
