Though it seems strange now, there was once a time when the payment of decent salaries to politicians was a great left-wing cause, writes Fintan O'Toole
In 1839, the pioneering democrats of the Chartist movement demanded, among other things, that members of parliament be paid the handsome sum of £500 a year each. A good wage was seen as a crucial step in breaking the monopoly of the rich. In an age when parliamentarians were not paid, it was impossible for a working man (women, of course, were another matter altogether) to go into full-time politics. Likewise, decent salaries for ministers were seen as a safeguard against corruption - politicians who were better paid than the average worker wouldn't have to worry about domestic security, and wouldn't be tempted to take bribes.
There's still supposed to be some element of this argument in the justification for the increasingly lavish sums we pay our politicians. But none of it is vaguely credible any more. Politics has become a career in itself. Instead of making it possible for ordinary workers to enter politics, the salaries have created an increasing distance between the experiences of ordinary workers and those of successful career politicians. And as for high salaries ensuring that ministers don't feel the need to accept cash from private individuals, we know how well that's worked. We now have an official political standard in which, as the Taoiseach has shown, it is perfectly acceptable for ministers to accept dig-outs from both public and private sources.
So why do we pay them so much? When the rest of us are getting 3 per cent last year and 2 per cent this year under the Towards 2016 deal, why are our Ministers getting increases of between 12 and 16 per cent on top of salaries that are already among the highest in the democratic world? The Review Body on Higher Remuneration, whose report was unsurprisingly accepted by the Cabinet last week, gives us some reasons, but they are astonishingly bad ones. It asks us, essentially, to feel sorry for the Ministers, whose salaries, it says, "provide inadequate compensation for the workloads borne by them". We are, it seems, expected to congratulate the review body on its restraint in increasing ministerial salaries merely by between €25,000 and €38,000 - the latter figure itself higher than the average industrial wage. The increases are higher than the entire wages of a team leader in a call centre in Limerick (€17,000-€22,000), and roughly equal to the salary of a software developer, a lab technician or a retail store manager. An IT director earns about €100,000 a year; a sales or marketing director about €95,000; a production supervisor about €40,000.
Ministers are to earn between €240,000 and €310,000. Do they really work six times harder than a supervisor in a factory? In justifying these salaries, the review body leans on one factor - levels of accountability that are, allegedly, "unique". "Apart from their accountability to the Oireachtas, they have an accountability to the electorate which entails standing for election at regular intervals in their capacity as members of the Dáil or Seanad."
This is pure, premium quality, grade A, sun-dried, oak-matured baloney. The electorate does not choose ministers, and has no way of knowing who will be in the Cabinet. And if accountability to parliament is what determines pay rates, our Ministers should be among the worst, rather than the best, paid politicians in the world. The level of accountability for Ministers is indeed unique - there is no other walk of life in which senior managers have to answer for so little.
How has Martin Cullen accounted for his decision to spend €60 million of our money on unusable voting machines that are still costing €700,000 a year in storage and insurance? (The Taoiseach told the Dáil that "any waste of money on the voting system lies at the Opposition's door", so perhaps Cullen's salary should be paid to the Opposition.) How come Micheál Martin could tell us that, as minister for health, he "does not bear any responsibility" for the nursing home charges debacle? Who was responsible for the disastrous over-runs on the PPARs health computing system? (The Taoiseach told the Dáil that it was the Health Service Executive's national director of services, who presumably should be getting a chunk of Bertie's salary.)
Who was accountable when the public roads programme, which was supposed to cost €5 billion, ended up costing €20 billion? Who accounts for the scandal of some kids ending up in classes of 40? Not Mary Hanafin, who told the Dáil: "That is not my fault". Who is responsible for the loss of the Aer Lingus service between Shannon and Heathrow? Not Noel Dempsey, whose department didn't even tell him about it.
Giving this lot massive pay increases because they are so accountable is like paying your cat because its barking frightens the robbers away. The effect will be to make them even more smug, more detached, more arrogant and even less accountable. And presumably, given the inverse logic of the review body, that will entitle them to more money.