James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Chair raised an interesting point on salary arrangements. As a Deputy, if I were to lose my seat tomorrow and am subsequently elected to the Seanad or, in 2024, to a local authority, I would not continue to receive a Deputy's salary. Yet, if I were the Secretary General of the Department of Health on just shy of €300,000 and I became the ambassador to Germany, I would take that salary with me. That is bizarre. That is the rule in place at present, that if a Secretary General of a Department leaves that position, he or she takes the full salary with them. Being an ambassador is perhaps the greatest civilian honour a civil servant could get. The level of money a Secretary General can be paid to fulfil that role is grotesque, and I believe the range in salary for the exact same role, going from assistant principal on approximately €60,000 to hypothetically up to €300,000, is wrong. There is no other career in the private or public sector where that range is possible. It is bonkers. Does the Comptroller and Auditor General have a view on this salary structure?