Sir, – For those among us who naively believed that the controversy over bonuses was largely a legacy issue, the recent revelations of the scale of the bonus payments, approximately €4 million, awarded to employees in An Bord Gais and the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) must have come as a bit of a shock.
In this context, the swift action of Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar which led to the return of the €100,000-plus bonus awarded to the chief executive of the DAA is to be welcomed. However, it serves to highlight a major weakness in the Government programme (Government for National Recovery 2011-2016) which was published less than four months ago, and yet contains not a single substantial reference to the bonus culture that has done such harm to Irish society in recent years.
The manner in which this feature of advanced capitalism has increasingly pitched the interests of the individual against those of society underlines the seriousness of this issue. Recent months have shown ample evidence of rising levels of public anger at the bonuses paid to top executives in all sectors of the economy. These bonuses may be legal, but they are morally questionable.
Bonus payments have, in the eyes of many managers, become synonymous with a just remuneration, and become disengaged from the concept of a reward for exceptional performance. Bonus payments which are excessive, or divorced from obvious and objectively measured performance, are blatant rent-seeking behaviour, and thus unacceptable. This is especially so when their main justification would appear to be international convention and comparability.
At a time of economic recession, excessive bonuses cannot be tolerated by government, if only because they threaten societal stability. The insights contained in section 32 of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate) suggest that allowing an influential segment of society to exempt itself from the sacrifices required of all creates deep resentment. As we have seen recently in Greece, this resentment could very easily lead to a breakdown in social cohesion, which is the bedrock of a properly functioning democracy and an orderly economy. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – When did Ireland become a nation where it is too much to expect people in senior positions to agree to do a good job for an excellent salary? Surely this bonus culture only attracts opportunists and self-servers? And we have seen scant evidence to date to convince us that people who have earned huge bonuses have performed any better. If anything, it becomes all about the bonus rather than the best thing to do.
What happened to: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?” Along with a large salary, is this not bonus enough? To be incentivised by serving your country would involve having integrity and principles, as immortalised by our much-missed Garret FitzGerald.
Luckily, we do in Ireland have countless wonderful Irish men and women who work tirelessly with dedication for the greater good. In my experience few of them are incentivised by bonuses. – Yours, etc,