TAOISEACH Enda Kenny said the Government had cut the number and cost of ministerial advisers by 30 per cent and by €1.1 million since 2009.

He was defending the €35,000 salary increase he sanctioned for a former Fine Gael party and now ministerial adviser Ciarán Conlon despite the opposition of the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams had called on Mr Kenny to explain “why you’re prepared to intervene to secure a €35,000 hike, a pay rise for a political crony . . . and yet you find it acceptable to cut child benefit, disability allowance and mental health provision”.

During Leaders’ Questions, Mr Adams pointed to the enormity of cuts for ordinary people. “You’re going to impose a €100 household charge. You’re going to cut payments to lone parents. These are choices that you make and it’s not fair and it’s wrong and you know that it’s wrong to give one citizen €35,000 extra and then to take money from those who are most vulnerable.”

But Mr Kenny said: “You come in here and you start off in Irish, German or Spanish and then you make a charge that it’s wrong and it’s unfair and all the rest of it. One of my responsibilities as Taoiseach is to give sanction to advisers.

“In the two-year period to the end of March the Sinn Féin MPs claimed £969,328 sterling in staff bills and you sir before your election to this Dáil, Deputy Gerry Adams, claimed £106,880 for eight staff in a parliament which you’ve never attended.

“This Government has reduced the number and the cost of ministerial advisers by 30 per cent since the end of 2009 from €4.7 million to €3.6 million.” The Taoiseach added that “39 of the 41 ministerial advisers in the last government were then earning salaries well above €92,000.”

He said the adviser had worked for Fine Gael for 10 years and “was on a salary well in excess of the limit that was set” in the guidelines and worked “ for five months before he received any payment”.

Mr Kenny told him one of his jobs as Taoiseach “is to sanction advisers. I do not negotiate in terms of salary scales for any adviser. My job is to sanction them or not. In this case, yes, I did send an email in respect of the sanction of this person involved.”

He quoted from guidelines under which appointments are made that “in particular circumstances where particular experience, technical expertise or skills are required or in exceptional circumstances the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in agreement with the Minister for Finance may sanction a higher salary rate”.

Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin had opposed the pay rise before Mr Kenny sanctioned it.

The Taoiseach said “the person involved here has his Masters degree in economics, has a long experience of dealing with the ways of politics and was chosen by the Minister for Jobs and Enterprise for a specific purpose in getting people off the dole and providing opportunities for working careers”.