THE furore over Dr Eddie O'Connor's salary and expenses package with Bord Na Mona seem small potatoes when viewed against the salaries and pay offs on offer in the boardrooms of the British water utilities. The Cabinet this week suspended Dr O'Connor on full pay and a third consultancy report is in the offing in what has become an increasingly bitter wrangle. The cost of resolution can be expected to rise with the matter now in the hands of "m'learned friends".

In British water utilities, a cockpit of controversy over "fat cat" remuneration, huge sums of taxpayers money are thrown at conflict resolution. Bill Frazer, who resigned in February as managing director of South West Water, this week received a £336,000 "golden goodbye" and has also been retained as a consultant on £50,000 a year. Mr Frazer, criticised last year when his remuneration package rose by more than 50 per cent to £217,000, also has share options worth £280,000. Unfortunately for Dr O Connor, his career path took him into a less lucrative mission impossible quagmire.

Any "golden goodbye", should he decide to accept it, will be somewhat less that water authority proportions.