Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the unwinding of the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, reductions and adjustments as it makes sense at this stage. Of course, there is another angle at which we have to look, namely, those areas where there is two-tier remuneration, with a view to ensuring it is equalised or got rid of as soon as possible, unless there is a very strong case that the prior level of remuneration was excessive. People doing the same job in the public service should have roughly the same salary.

There are two points I want to mention in particular. I have to declare an interest in that I have an accrued public service pension of sorts as a Member of the Oireachtas, as an Attorney General, a Minister and a Tánaiste. However, under changes brought in, I am not in receipt of that pension now because I am a Member of the Oireachtas. I make no complaint about that. It was payable as soon as I left office. Senator Paddy Burke made an important point in that if the pensionable age is to be raised to 70, a Deputy who gave the best of her or his life in 20 years' service from the ages of 30 to 50 is going to have to wait a long time to see the benefit of any accrued pension if 70 becomes the starting point.

In law, the Supreme Court has ruled that pensions are deferred remuneration. We have to realise that in our country, we are not the same as say the United Kingdom. Former MPs and former Ministers, in particular, could look very easily to alternative employment having lost their seats at Westminster. That is not the case here. There are few enough former Ministers of my generation and the generation before that who have been endowed with directorships and jobs of that kind on their retirement. On the contrary, it seems that most of the private sector, at any rate, shies away from them. I am not whingeing about myself, just in case anybody thinks I am. However, most of the private sector wants to appear apolitical. Businesses do not want somebody who was, in former times, a Minister and who may or may not have been controversial in his or her time, sitting on their boards. There is not a huge gravy train at the end of public life in Ireland if and when the electorate decides to dispense with one's services. One's memoirs might get a few thousand euro on a good day and a couple of libel suits to boot. One might end up in the red with that enterprise.

In terms of one's capacity to end up in the media, I notice the BBC is very generous to former politicians. It allows them to do this, that and the other. In Ireland, we seem to be a little more abstemious in this regard.

If we want to attract people who already have substantial incomes into politics, it will be increasingly difficult unless they have a very generous State or semi-State employer, such as a university, RTÉ, which would give them leave of absence or the teaching profession from which they can get a leave of absence of sorts, or analogous positions to those. To hazard one's entire prosperity and one's family's means of support on the idealism that is required to go into politics, to put one's name on the block and to make the sacrifices that are part of becoming a politician will become increasingly insuperable and the obstacles to participation for those people will become more and more insurmountable.We should be very careful about making sacrifices in the hope of appeasing some people in the media when the net result is that the kind of people who go into politics becomes narrowed down to those who have nothing to lose. That is not a good idea.

The last point I want to make relates to judicial pensions. Some time after I left office as Minister for Justice and Equality, a Bill was passed in these Houses which increased the number of years that a judge would have to serve, from 15 to 20, before he or she would get a pension. The consequence is that in order to obtain a full pension as a judge, which is half of one's salary from the date of retirement at 70 years of age, one has to have been appointed a judge at the age of 50. One cannot say at the age of 48, for example, that one will be a judge in two year's time. The world does not work that way. To be considered eligible, suitable and desirable as a judge is not something within an individual's own gift. If a top solicitor or barrister who is making decisions in his or her mid-40s about whether to seek promotion to the bench succeeds in that enterprise by the age of 50, that person is probably not at the top of his or her career at the time of becoming a judge. The 15 year rule allowed people to become a judge at the age of 55 and by that stage, they probably should be at the top of their career because they are not going to become much more successful thereafter unless something great happens to them in their declining years. We should restore that particular provision to 15 years to make it more attractive to people at the top of their careers to seek judicial appointment.

I would make one more point that I hope is not taken badly by the Minister or the Department. The section which changed the pension criteria from 15 to 20 years was hidden away in a Schedule to a large Act. No reference was made to it in the explanatory memorandum. I checked the Dáil and Seanad debates but no reference whatsoever was made to the fact that it was being done. It was a sleight of hand between two Departments to achieve something in total secrecy. None of the Members of these Houses had their attention drawn to the fact that they were making that change. It was a bad idea that was never debated in either House of the Oireachtas and the sooner it is reversed, the better. It is suitable as an amendment to this legislation.