President turns off Áras lights as part of cost cutting

PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has said that she is “walking around the Áras turning off lights” as part of her personal contribution to reducing public expenditure.

Interviewed on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme yesterday, she revealed that she intended to make a 12.5 per cent reduction in her own personal allowance as president.

Mrs McAleese said that, as soon as the economic downturn began, she wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs requesting that the foreign travel costs incurred by the presidency be reviewed.

“I just wanted us to look very, very carefully at everything we did, to ensure that everything could be justified and grounded and rooted and that we were getting best value for money,” the President told interviewer Richard Downes.

She believed that, among public figures, “I was one of the first people to reduce my salary.” Last October, the President announced she would take a voluntary 10 per cent cut in her annual salary of €325,508.

In a further move yesterday, she said: “I have indicated here that, as part of our cost-saving, I intend to make a 12.5 per cent reduction in my own personal allowances here for this current year.

“In fact, it gets us into a little bit of a constitutional difficulty because, under the Constitution these allowances cannot be reduced, but there’s nothing to stop me from not spending them.

“It’s nip and tuck everywhere, to be honest, including walking around the Áras turning off lights.”

The President’s annual allowance is €317,435 and a 12.5 per cent reduction would amount to €39,679.38.

In the event of  new reductions in public service remuneration, Mrs McAleese said that she would look again at her own salary.