Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 3 July 2014

Public Accounts Committee

2012 Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 39 - Health Service Executive
Section 38 - Agencies Remuneration

11:10 am

Mr. Hamilton Goulding:

I will tell the Deputy why not. It is what certainly would now be seen as a governance failure. I think it is something that was a common enough occurrence in boards because of our national reluctance to discuss individual wages openly, there was a remuneration committee which determined the wages of executives. The remuneration committee did that and then found the level of remuneration, came back to the board and said, "We've sorted out the remuneration of XYZ" without actually specifying what that level was. So that was the situation, undesirable as it seems now. Indeed, to some extent, the members of a non-executive board would not always be expected to know the salary level of every person within the organisation. So consequently-----