Martin clarifies severance payments

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has moved to clarify the instructions on severance payments given to the party’s former ministers.

Mr Martin said that all outgoing cabinet members who were re-elected in February had waived the payments as there was concern about the scale of them following the party's lengthy period in government.

He said he had not imposed the same criteria that he, Brendan Smith and Eamon Ó Cuív faced on ex-ministers like Willie O'Dea, who had left the cabinet months earlier, or junior ministers such as Dara Calleary and Billy Kelleher.

"We were the first set of cabinet minister to waive severance payments. Present members of the Government received severance payments when they were last in government that were never returned," Mr Martin told RTÉ Morning Ireland.

"I made it clear to Willie O'Dea that I was not applying that to him because he left office well before that decision was taken and I certainly made it clear to the junior ministers that I did not see them in the same frame at all. They were younger members. They were not there for the same period of time."

At the time he insisted that severance payments should only be made to people who had lost their jobs.

Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín last week said that with "such a high turnover" of TDs and senators in the recent elections the State was facing a bill of €5.3 million in severance payments over the course of the year and criticised a number of Fianna Fáil members.

“All sitting TDs who are in receipt of a severance payment for former ministers or ministers of State – such as Willie O’Dea, Billy Kelleher and Dara Calleary – should return those severance packages to the State.”

Separately, Mr Martin said it was a difficult decision for the party not to contest the presidential election but that he was committed to reviewing its policy and financial positions as well as strengthening its membership.

"The strategic decision essentially is to strengthen the capacity of the party for future activity both in the Dáil and critically in the local elections of 2014," he said.

"That's across policy, it's across structural membership, it's across financial resources and capacity and particularly having an independent financial capacity free of any vested interests and to enable the party to be stronger into the future."

Mr Martin said it was not a financial decision to stay out of the election but that it was more so based on the reaction Fianna Fáil received in the February election.