Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

This week alone, my office has received phone calls from single mothers looking for baby food, farmers dealing with spiralling and crippling costs due to the increase of fertiliser, members of the Defence Forces who are sleeping in cars, homeowners in Donegal looking for affordable caravans to rent because their houses are crumbling around them and students who are on a diet of Pot Noodle because they cannot afford much else. The CEO of the HSE is paid more than the Taoiseach, five times more than the President of India, twice the amount the President of France; more than the Prime Ministers of Britain and Canada, more than the President of the USA and more than the Chancellor of Germany. Would the Taoiseach agree that the wages of top civil servants should be proportional to their performance and productivity?

If he agrees with this, surely there needs to be some reduction in the wages of these civil servants when one looks at what is happening within much of the public service at present. There is the Kerry child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, scandal, the national children’s hospital overspend, the failure of the CervicalCheck tribunal etc. Why are we paying such high wages to certain civil servants when they are in charge of so many scandals? The Taoiseach mentioned a wage of €215,998 per annum and that is a lottery win for most people on the average wage in this country. There is a chasm between the experience of most ordinary citizens in this country and the largesse that is experienced by many within the upper echelons of the Civil Service. I call on the Taoiseach to make sure that chasm is closed, that the multiple of earnings at the top compared to the bottom is reduced and that there is some level of productivity and performance in the salaries. That is the experience of practically everybody else earning an income in this country. Why is it not the case in the Government and the Civil Service?

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