Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I do not disagree with much of what the Deputy has said, which is unusual. It is not my normal position. The principle I have brought to the job I have been given is that there needs to be a semblance of fairness. I am not speaking in terms of saving an enormous amount of money. The number of people at the top is small. The quantum of money is not enormous. When some people are seen to be given an extraordinary payment from the public purse when others are struggling to survive, it is more than aggravating. I accept that it is damaging to the sense of solidarity. The Deputy and I can debate the consequences of how far he would like to go in this regard. Salaries of €500,000, €600,000 or €800,000 were the norm in some sectors until quite recently. All of that has changed. Since we came into office, nobody in the Civil Service has been paid more than €200,000. That is a big change in a number of months.

I agree entirely with Deputy Seán Fleming's suggestion that we should establish a hierarchy of commercial semi-States. If one sets one's ceiling at €200,000, either one's base will be very low or one will have a very squashed scale. The pay levels of the chief executives were evaluated independently as part of the Hay process. I took what Hay determined in 2007 to be the appropriate level of pay for each of them. I applied all the FEMPI impacts on them and I took another 10% off them on top of that. That is how I determined the pay levels in semi-States. As I recall it, just one official - the chief executive officer of the ESB - was receiving over €250,000. To put it bluntly, people were screaming at me that such a level of pay would not attract somebody of the calibre required to run an organisation as complicated as the ESB. If we accepted the argument of Deputies on the other side of the House that there should be a blanket ceiling of €100,000, we would kill social medicine. We would have private medicine only. With the exception of a few altruistic people from Deputy Higgins's school, all of our heart specialists, cancer specialists and child specialists would go into the private sector. The vast majority of them would not work for €100,000. They would choose to treat those who could afford to pay.

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