The pay and perks that the political class has adopted over the past decade is an affront to ordinary voters, writes Stephen Collins.
THE FURORE over the expenses regime at Fás should has prompted controversy in the political world but the penny still doesn't seem to have dropped with our politicians that the decline in acceptable standards of behaviour started with them.
The pay and perks that the political class has adopted over the past decade is an affront to ordinary voters, many of whom are now facing pay cuts - if they are lucky.
The attempt last year by the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his ministers, already among the highest-paid politicians in the world, to justify another massive pay hike was the mark of a Government that had lost touch.
Ministers did take a 10 per cent pay cut in the Budget but, unless it marks the first step in a process of bringing the pay, expenses and pensions of politicians into line with the rest of society, then they will not have the moral authority to lead the country through the economic storm that has only just begun.
That five ministers availed of Fás largess on junkets to Florida is symptomatic of a political ruling class so long in power they can't see anything wrong with using the State's assets as if they were their own private property.
Ministers are extremely well paid, and that is before their perks and pensions are added in. Ministers have private limousines, credit cards and allowances to help them acquire a property in Dublin, on top of salaries that exceed €250,000 a year. Then they qualify for ministerial pensions after two years in the job.
The next rung down are Ministers of State, whose numbers were expanded to 20 after the last election to make sure there were more jobs for the boys. They, too, have extra allowances, cars and drivers, as well as extra pension entitlements.
Then come the chairs of the 25 or so Oireachtas committees, who are all paid more than €26,000 a year on top of their TDs' salaries of over €100,000. Vice chairs and whips on the myriad committees are also paid extra and, just for good measure, 60 per cent of these allowances are pensionable. It is reckoned that only two Government TDs don't have some kind of perk.
There is a unique expenses regime for TDs and Senators, with mileage, overnight and daily allowances payable on an unvouched basis which the Revenue Commissioners would not tolerate in the private sector.
Ten years ago Charlie McCreevy, as minister for finance, updated the regulations to allow all TDs and Senators claim mileage for travel by car to and from Leinster House, even when they share a car or travel by bus or train. This was introduced to legalise a system whereby members were actually claiming illegally for expenses. Rather than force them to comply, McCreevy changed the law. All of this helps to explain why the Government is finding it so difficult to get the public to accept the need to make sacrifices so that the country can pull through the current crisis.
One of the big problems resulting from the collapse in tax revenues is that the country can no longer afford the public sector pay and pensions bill. However, with politicians themselves such beneficiaries of the system there is no way they will be able to persuade other people in the public service to accept pay restraint, never mind a decoupling of pensions from current salaries, which will have to happen in the long run if the country is to remain solvent. The politicians will have to face up to the need to dismantle their own system of pay and conditions before they can persuade others to follow.
The Fás controversy also raises profound questions about social partnership. It is another example of how trade union and employer representatives have got themselves involved in a cosy arrangement with the political establishment that has blinded them all to reality. The national pay agreement between the three sides in September demonstrated the level of fantasy into which all of them had drifted. The deal is already a dead letter in most of the private sector and will almost inevitably be cancelled in the public sector next year.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny called for "a values revolution" in response to the Fás controversy and he was absolutely right. Now that his party is riding high on the back of discontent with the Government he should take a real initiative and lead by example. He did take a pay cut before the Budget and had the courage to say at his party conference last weekend that the national pay agreement should be suspended. If he went on from that to pledge that, in government, Fine Gael would cut the number of junior ministers in half, abolish most Oireachtas committees, review all the perks that go to politicians and abolish the system of unvouched expenses, he would show the public that he is in touch with their needs.
One of our problems is that the political system and the social partners take far too long to respond to changes in the economic environment. Other countries around the world, whose problems are not nearly as deep as ours, are responding to the recession much more decisively.
For instance, this week in Singapore a pay review body has announced cuts in politicians' pay. They have a system whereby the pay of politicians and public servants is linked to GDP. When the economy is booming they get bonuses, but when it shrinks they take pay cuts. They also have a system of benchmarking that puts public sector salaries at about 75 per cent of private sector equivalents. The point is that there is an open and transparent system of payment for politicians and public servants - and they take a share of the pain when things go wrong. Our politicians could learn a lesson from that.