Sir, – Can anyone explain why the head of the HSE has a salary that is more than double that of his counterpart in the NHS, an organisation that is more than 10 times the size of our HSE? Instead of a pay rise, the head of the NHS took a voluntary pay cut of £20,000. That’s more like an example of us all being in this together. – Yours , etc,
DAVID CASSIDY,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – HSE director general Paul Reid’s salary increased to €420,103 last year. This happened at the same time that hundreds of thousands of people were thrown out of their jobs due to the Covid-19 restrictions in Ireland. The pandemic unemployment payment those workers are paid is capped at €350 a week, and just over €18,000 a year.
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Paul Reid was chief of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform from 2011 to 2014. He was credited with €1 billion in savings in the public sector pay bill due to public sector pay caps and pay cuts that he negotiated at the time. The public sector pay policy he oversaw involved cutting the salaries of the highest-paid public servants the most.
Why is the opposite being allowed to happen during the pandemic? Why is public policy permitting pay rises in the public sector that increase income inequality between those at the top and those at the bottom of the pay scale? Why is the gap between those in work and those out of work being allowed to widen? How does this fit in with the notion that during the pandemic we are all in this together?
This criticism of the pay increase for the head of the HSE is not at all meant to take away the hard work Paul Reid is doing, nor the unprecedented challenges he faces. However, there is a mountain of research over the decades that has found that the more income inequality there is in a society, the worse outcomes there are for the health and wellbeing of the population. Income inequality is bad for everyone in society but it has the most detrimental impact on the poor. If we are genuine about social solidarity and the need to bring about more equality in post-pandemic Ireland, we need to look again at the need to bring in public sector pay caps. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOANNA TUFFY,
Labour,
Lucan, Co Dublin.