Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This morning people are reading in the newspaper that the HSE is backing down on the issue of excessive salary top-ups for senior managers of voluntary hospitals and section 35 organisations, as they are called. The Tánaiste will recall that people were shocked in the recent past when they learned about the scale of the top-ups received by some of these individuals. They were even more horrified to discover that, in some instances, the top-ups were being funded through charitable donations. Last December, for example, we discovered that the chief executive officer, CEO, of St. Vincent's University Hospital was receiving a top-up of almost €140,000, in addition to a HSE salary of almost the same amount, with a privately funded car allowance of almost €20,000. We also discovered that the total bill for top-ups was €3.2 million. The organisations that engage in this practice are fully funded from the public purse. Their employees are regarded as public servants. Front-line public services are strained after seven years of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Party cuts. People could not and do not yet understand how such excessive pay was allowed for a small number within the public service. I remind the Tánaiste that the Government, like the previous one, was swift to introduce emergency legislation to drastically cut the salary levels of workers across the public service and the Civil Service, including those not just on modest salaries but low pay. Is the Tánaiste aware of the difficulties the HSE is experiencing in implementing public sector pay policy in these organisations? Will he inform the Dáil of the scale or level of this difficulty? What does the Government propose to do to ensure all of these individuals respect and comply with public sector pay policy?

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