MINISTER FOR Finance Brian Lenihan has yet to approve the appointment of a group to review the pay of the chief executives of semi-State companies,four months after the group was approved by Cabinet.
In a response to a parliamentary question submitted by Fianna Fáil TD Michael McGrath, Mr Lenihan said he would be appointing the group shortly but did not specify a date. The department said yesterday that no decision had been taken as yet.
Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael’s spokesman on communications and energy, said he was astonished the group has not been appointed.
Mr Varadkar said: “By now, you would have expected a report and a decision to alter pay levels, especially in the current climate. In my view it would be appropriate to have a cap on public sector salaries as part of the four-year plan. A reasonable cap would be 15 times the lowest salary in the organisation.”
The group was announced in late July to examine how the salaries of chief executives of semi-States – including the ESB, RTÉ, An Post, Bord Gáis, Bord na Móna, Coillte and the Dublin Airport Authority – were calculated.
The new group was expected to operate separately from the review group on State assets, chaired by Colm McCarthy.
The chief executive of the ESB, Pádraig McManus, was paid a package worth more than €650,000 in 2009. The head of the DAA, Declan Collier, was paid a total of €568,000 in 2009. The chief executive of An Post, Donal Connell, received €500,000.
Other high-earning chief executives include John Mullins of Bord Gáis, who was paid in excess of €350,000; and David Gunning, the chief executive of Coillte, who was paid €400,000 in 2008.
The most recent review of executive pay in the semi-States was in the autumn of 2007 by the Higher Remuneration Review Group, which also awarded large increases in pay to the Taoiseach, (bringing his salary to €308,000) and to Ministers. The rises for Government Ministers were later reversed. In 2008 some executives of semi-States took voluntary cuts in salary of 10 per cent.
Mr McGrath, a TD for Cork South Central, has also criticised the pay levels of senior executives.
He said some “enjoy grossly excessive remuneration packages which are way out of line with the market realities of 2010”.
He said a pay review “should be held immediately”.