Presidential hopeful Seán Gallagher today said all candidates should disclose fees paid to them as members of public boards but said earnings from the private sector were “not relevant”.
Mr Gallagher yesterday revealed he has received €41,550 in pay and expenses since 2008 for serving on State boards.
“I think it’s important to disclose income if it is taxpayers’ money. I don’t think the issue is what people earned if they were in the private sector like myself," he said this morning.
"I don't need to know what someone else was earning in a private capacity. The issue is how much of taxpayers' money was paid to people on boards," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
However, Mr Gallagher said he had instructed his accountant to prepare his P60 and would be “putting it in the public arena”.
Mr Gallagher has sat on three State boards. He earned between €8,000 and €9,000 in fees per annum from a North-South body, Intertrade Ireland. He collected no expenses. He also joined the board of Fás in July last year but donated all fees of €11,000 to charity. He has taken no fees from the third State company, Drogheda Port Company.
He received a fee of €5,000 for appearing on the RTÉ television show Dragon's Den and expenses involved in attending filming.
Yesterday, Independent Mary Davis challenged all other candidates to disclose their full earnings.
In a letter issued yesterday evening, Ms Davis urged her six rivals to disclose their income, as well as fees and expenses from other employment, boards and organisations. She also said that all should confirm their tax-compliant status.
She said the request was being made in the interest of transparency and to ensure the public was “fully informed as to the nature of remunerated work” of each candidate. The development is perceived as having shifted the focus of the election debate to a more in-depth scrutiny of the personal finances and earnings of each candidate.
The letter was issued some hours after Ms Davis posted her P60 and full details of all her earnings on her campaign website yesterday.
She disclosed she was paid €156,000 last year as managing director of Special Olympics Europe Eurasia. She also revealed she has earned some €390,000 over 10 years as a member of the boards of three State bodies and three commercial firms. Two of the companies were Bank of Ireland subsidiaries, for which she earned €43,000 in fees last year. The third was The Irish Times Trust. The three State bodies were the Dublin Airport Authority, the National Sports Campus and the Broadcasting Commission.
Senator David Norris said last night he would have no difficulty in making public the details of his earnings as set out in Revenue’s P60 form. Mr Norris’s salary is €65,000 a year. He claimed €14,000 in expenses in 2009.
Dana Rosemary Scallon said: “I’ve never been on a board. I’ve never been invited to be on a board so I won’t be able to put that forward and I haven’t been on the Council of State but I have been on a council estate,” she said.
Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell’s sole income is from his position as an MEP, for which he is paid the same salary as a TD of €92,672, a spokesman said. He said over the weekend that he claims expenses roughly equivalent to his salary.
Michael D Higgins has a pension income of just under €110,000, including a €90,000 Dáil and ministerial pension and a university teaching pension of just under €20,000.
Sinn Féin candidate Martin McGuinness has said he draws down the industrial wage, which in the Republic is €39,700.