Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

There is a view that special advisers are fair game. I have been privileged to work in three Departments. Special advisers play a unique role as a sounding board. Most of the people we recruited have come at a reduced cost. In many cases we are asking people with full-time, pensionable jobs to give them up and to work for an unknown period of time. We do not know how long their positions will last but certainly we could not give them contracts for longer than five years. We also ask them to work all the hours God sends and have their names published in national newspapers and mentioned in Parliament. Many people who we invited were not willing to do that. We need advisers and every country I know of has political advisers, even for smaller executives such as in Northern Ireland. The Deputy First Minister has three personal advisers, as does the First Minister, because it is understood that even in the absence of complicated matters such as EU-related work or engaging with the troika, a skill base outside the normal Civil Service is required as a sounding board. I want to make a case for ensuring the people we use are not significantly worse off. I agree these are all good wages. However, we are asking people to give a commitment to the State. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste are excluded from the norms of the pay grade, as I explained, so they do not require sanction to be excluded; they are excluded under the regulations already.

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