FINE GAEL has announced it will attempt to use Dáil procedure to ensure that the country’s highest paid public servants do not escape the full impact of the pay cuts announced in the Budget.
The party’s deputy leader and finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, yesterday committed his party to reversing the Government decision to exempt senior public servants from a major portion of the cut.
Mr Bruton’s comments came after it emerged 600 top public servants, and not 160 as originally announced, will escape the full impact of the 2010 pay cuts.
The change will apply not only to assistant secretaries in Government departments, as originally intended, but to local Government officials, health service managers, senior gardaí and Army officers.
Mr Bruton said Fine Gael will seek to annul the proposal of Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to mitigate the top-level cut when he publishes it as an order in the Dáil.
“It’s disturbing to learn that some 600 highly paid public servants will now be exempt from the full impact of Budget 2010’s pay cuts. It is wrong for the highest earners to be able to wriggle out of the full public sector pay cut,” said Mr Bruton.
Fine Gael would table a motion to annul the order and would be looking for Government time in which to debate it, he said.
The issue is due to feature in Dáil question time on Wednesday. The issue will also be raised at the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party tomorrow evening following a debate at last week’s meeting at which a number of TDs expressed opposition to the move to exempt senior public servants from the full impact of the pay cuts.