Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister decided to increase the pay of the Secretary General of the Department of Health by €81,000. That is three times what a qualified public health nurse would get in the first year. The Minister said it was because of recruitment issues. Did the Minister benchmark it against anything, such as equivalents in Britain or France? He would have found that this is probably one of the most generous positions he is awarding. In the other examples where the Minister said there were difficulties recruiting, there was at least an option in which they went out recruiting, found out they could not fill the position and then looked at the remuneration again. The problem with the Minister is as follows. When it comes to people on senior salaries, we had the same situation with the "super junior" Ministers of State where the Government approved an additional position with an further €17,000 on top of a Minister of State's salary. Now, with the Secretary General of the Department of Health, not content with it being €211,000, the Minister increases it to €81,000 without any paperwork whatsoever to justify that.