Top civil servant calls for commission to provide brief on politicians' income

THE CHAIRMAN of the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants has called for an independent commission to provide guidelines on pay and allowances for politicians.

In an address to the organisation's annual conference in Dublin yesterday, Peadar Carpenter said that politicians should be properly paid for the job and they should not be tied to Civil Service pay rates. He said that it was also quite proper that they should be compensated for travel to the Dáil.

However, he said that there was no doubt that the current system of allowances, pension arrangements, employing of family members etc, had "brought the whole system into disrepute" and that it was time for an independent commission to provide clear guidelines in this area.

TDs' pay is linked to that of principal officers in the Civil Service and any special increases, over and above national wage rounds, are determined by the benchmarking body.

Adoption of the association's proposal would mean the establishment of a commission that would deal exclusively with pay and allowances for TDs.

Mr Carpenter said: "This is a question of leadership and if we are to hear a call to patriotism we are at the very least entitled to ask what leadership is being shown by our political leaders . . . you cannot stand over Oireachtas members claiming mileage when they use their free travel passes, when they are paid overnight rates when they live within the commuter belt and even in Co Dublin . . . It is unfair on those members of the Oireachtas who are most professional and have a genuine sense of public service to be equated with those who can't seem to take their noses out of the trough."

He said that if confidence was not restored very quickly then this would "continue to distract us all from the most serious state of the economy and the national effort to work our way out of the current mess".

Mr Carpenter said that the past year had been a most difficult one for all public servants. He said it had also been a year in which the public service was attacked on what seemed a daily basis by many "commentators" and this charge had been led by employer organisations, Ibec, the CIF and Isme.

Mr Carpenter criticised Ibec as "a somewhat reclusive organisation" who did not publish a list of its members.

He said that he had never heard Ibec director general Turlough O'Sullivan, who was attacking the pay of public servants, being questioned about his own salary.

"You can bet your house on it that he is probably on a salary . . . that would be higher than the highest-paid secretary general in the Civil Service."

He said that the association had gone to a professional public relations firm about responding to the media criticism and had been told that "we would not receive a balanced hearing and in fact we could leave ourselves open to even more attacks given our members' conditions".

Mr Carpenter said that there was widespread acceptance that successive Governments had eroded the tax base and that urgent action was required to ensure that it is widened and restructured so that all citizens pay their fair share of tax.

"For too long many sectors of the economy have been able to avoid paying . . . tax . . . Tax breaks should be closed . . . Exemptions should only be granted in the context of job creation projects where the exemption is only given when the jobs are realised."

He said there is a need to bring confidence back into our system by way of enforcing and where appropriate jailing offenders.