Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The notion of pay to special advisers is clearly nothing whatever to do with parliamentary activities and the notion that activities supporting parliamentary parties should be conflated with this is bizarre. Nonetheless, I will deal with the issue, about which I have strong feelings. I have had the privilege of holding a ministerial post in three Departments, all of which were challenging. They were in the areas of health, environment and, in the past three years, public expenditure and reform. Every parliamentary democracy that I know of, where an executive is elected, has parliamentary advisers who are akin to the political thinking of the Minister. It is absolutely essential for the efficient working of the Government. We all know that, and when we are in Government we need such a service. There is not enough of it, to put it bluntly. It does not matter how many civil servants we have, and there can be any number at any rate of pay; if we have two non-civil servants, however, this seems to be a bone of contention. We should get off that hook.

With regard to rates of pay, as a result of the dire circumstances we were in I determined a guideline level of pay, which was the principal officer standard rate. That pay rate was well below the rate paid to special advisers in the previous Fianna Fáil Administration. To put it bluntly, implicit in that decision was that where suitable and really good people were to be coaxed into the public service on a temporary basis, we would at least pay them what they received before they came to the public service. He would kill me for saying it, but I could quote my own special adviser. I rang a guy whom I absolutely wanted to work with me with an offer. I asked him to give up his current full-time salaried permanent position and work for me. I did not know how long that would be for, as I did not know how long the Government would survive. It could have been a month, a year or five years at the outside. I asked him to take a pay cut and understand that everything he did would be in the public domain. I asked him to work all the hours God would send. Foolishly, he said "Yes" to all those questions.

The notion that we can get people of calibre but not pay them a rate for the job - while asking them to work all the hours God sends with no security - means that we would not get a throng of good people, unless there are people with an extraordinary view of the public service. Most of the people working with Ministers of all persuasions are imbued with that sense of public service. We need a broader narrative in this regard.

I know I am straying well outside the confines of the amendment. We should appreciate the work done by the political adviser system, which is the norm in public administration everywhere else, and value rather than diminish it.