MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said he will not be resigning his position as a teacher, which he left 20 years ago because he still has a young family and politics is a precarious business.
Both Mr Martin and Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Hanafin said they are not still building pension credits as teachers – though other ex-teachers now serving as backbenchers continue to build up dual pension rights.
Questioned in Brussels, Mr Martin rejected suggestions that he should give up his hold on the teaching post in Cork city, which still requires the employment of a substitute teacher two decades on.
“You can give up your post. But I haven’t done that because again I am 48 years of age. I have a young family, to be frank with you, I don’t intend [to do so],” he told journalists.
“If anything happened tomorrow morning with regard to my political career – I’m not going anywhere in a hurry – there is another 20 years to go [but] you have to take these situations into consideration,” he said.
While political stability and long-running Dáils have been the norm over the last decade, he said the situation was completely different in the 1980s when he started his political career, when there were three elections between 1987 and 1992.
“Those were the scenarios under which people were more cautious about giving up a post and taking a chance on their career,” said Mr Martin, who said teacher backbenchers should not build up credits as both a TD and a teacher at the same time.
“My own view is that there shouldn’t be dual counting [of pension rights]. When people start out on political life they don’t start politics with a view to what pensions they are going to get,” he said.
He claimed his teaching post would have been abolished if he had quit: “That was clearly my understanding of it from the very beginning, so the school would actually have lost a position. But be that as it may.”
He said “as a young married man” the risk of losing an election was always there. “People do well in one election and they don’t do well in the next and it’s certainly an option for teachers that has existed since the very beginning of the Dáil.
“When I was appointed a Minister, I never expected any income from the teaching salary – the difference between the substitute and the higher scale that a teacher with increments would get.
“And likewise, I don’t believe there should be dual counting as regards pensions and that is something I’m sure that will be sorted out as part of the review under way by the Minister for Finance,” he said.
“But there is an issue with the volatility of politics and that if people after four or five years lose a seat, or after 10 years, they can be caught in between with no pension entitlement either [from their] previous employment as a teacher or indeed as a TD,” he said.
Under Oireachtas rules, older deputies qualify for a full pension worth €50,000 plus once they are 55, though deputies elected in 2007 under poorer conditions will not qualify until they are 65. Ministers qualify for a €70,000 pension if they reach 10 years service once they are 55, and even if they continue to serve as backbenchers, though efforts are under way to restrict such rights in future.
Sinn Féin TD Arthur Morgan said Ministers such as Mr Martin and Ms Hanafin would eventually enjoy three pensions.