The decision to raise the pay of the incoming Secretary General of the Department of Health by €81,000 to €292,000 per year "stinks to the high heavens," the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee heard today.
The comment by Sinn Féin's Matt Carthy came as the committee considered correspondence from Independent TD Matt Shanahan who said the package outlined in the recent advertisement for the job "...appears to be considerably in excess of the published civil service salary scales as revised on 1/10/20".
"I would ask you to consider exploring this issue with the Department to explore if our well-established public sector job evaluation processes were followed, and if this advertisement was an efficient and good measure, contributes to the improvement in public administration and would achieve value for money," Deputy Shanahan wrote.
The position of Secretary General in the Department of Health is currently being filled on an interim basis by Robert Watt, who until recently was Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
At present, Mr Watt is receiving his DPER salary of around €210,000 rather than the proposed new salary of €292,000.
Public Accounts Committee Chairman Brian Stanley of Sinn Féin noted that the Committee has sent a lengthy letter to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform asking 14 questions relating to how the proposal for the pay rise originated, and how it was approved.
Mr Stanley said it was four weeks since the issue had first been raised publicly, but at this point, the Committee was no clearer as to who made the decision to "bump up" the salary by €81,000, why the decision was taken, and whether it had been taken by politician, civil servants or groups of ministers.
Mr Stanley said there had been a suggestion that part of the reason for the increase could be that the Chief Executive of the HSE Paul Reid was on a figure around €360,000, and that the person who would be going in as Secretary General would be supervising him, and should have a higher salary.
He raised a potential parallel with the situation where the Secretary General of the Department of Finance supervises the head of the National Treasury Management Agency, who would be on higher pay.
He also cited the situation where the Secretary General in the Department of Justice would have oversight of the Garda Commissioner, who would also be on a higher salary.
Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy welcomed the decision to investigate the overall issue of remuneration among higher paid public servants.
"This issue stinks to the high heavens, that we have a situation where essentially a job is teed up for a former Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform moving to a new department," he said.
He said the decision sent out all the wrong signals when there was a two-tier pay scale for new entrants since 2011 in the public service, and said the issue needed to be tackled in a "robust" manner.
Mr Carthy said it was clearly a source of concern for many that this would lead to a situation where other high level public servants would be seeking significant pay increases in line with what was proposed for the Secretary General of the Department of Health.
He said there was no rationale for this and that the silence about official responses to this was "deafening".
He said anyone who would look at the remit of PAC would say they had an obligation never mind a right to investigate.
Committee Chair Brian Stanley stressed that the PAC could not set or seek to have any role in setting pay for any public servant. He said that the issue they were flagging up was the lack of process, which was unusual. He also highlighted the potential knock-on effect on public sector pay.
Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy echoed the concerns raised.
She noted that it was unclear whether the PAC or the Finance Committee was the appropriate body to investigate the pay rise. She said it was important that politicians in the two committees should not end up at loggerheads with each other.
She said the key issue was to get to the origin of how the decision was made, the process involved, and the knock-on consequences.
She noted restrictions presented by standing orders regarding the remit of the PAC, adding that the Committee should seek an extension to its remit from the Committee on Procedure and Privileges in order to enquire into the issue alongside the Finance Committee.
Chair Brian Stanley said the Committee on Procedure and Privileges had given a commitment to respond to the PAC request within a week.
