Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish everybody a happy new year. I raise the decision by the Government to sanction a pay rise of €90,000 per year for the post of Secretary General of the Department of Health. I ask the Leader of the House to ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, for his rationale for that decision. I would like him to outline the pension liabilities that this increase is going to have on the State. I would also like to know if the Minister has factored in the likelihood of Secretaries General of other Departments now seeking similar increases. One would have to ask what is so L'Oréal about this particular post that it is worth €292,000 per annum.

I also have to ask how a Government can be so tone deaf to what is going on around it. In the past seven days alone, the number of people in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, has increased by 15%. These are people who were working and now, through no fault of their own, are being asked to stay at home and, of course, they are doing that in the interests of public health. However, many of those people are now being asked to live on reduced incomes for a period. At the same time, the Government saw fit to offer student nurses and midwives a paltry €100 per week to go and work on the front line while one individual is apparently worth €90,000 extra per year to this Government.

The timing of the pay increase also comes in the same week that tax bills will be landing through the letterboxes of many homes. I listened with great interest to the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, when she spoke on the radio yesterday. She dismissed the concerns around the tax bills and said that they will only apply to a small number of individuals and will be spread over a number of years. She said, basically, that there is nothing to see here and it will amount to nothing more than the cost of a cup of coffee. I find it bizarre. If the amount is so small and will affect so few people, why did the Government see fit to introduce legislation to retrospectively apply a tax liability for the first time in the history of the State? Over the years, we have seen plenty of accountancy firms find loopholes in the law to avoid paying millions of euro in tax for things that should have been taxed. Those loopholes were there and the accountancy firms availed of them. I did not see any urgency to have retrospective tax bills applied to those firms. There is a glaring disparity between the group of society that has been out working on the front line, those who have been furloughed because of public health, and those in the elite. That disparity is on show for all to see this week.

I ask the Leader to take that back to the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, and ask him if we, in this House, can have information about how he reached the decision to introduce this massive pay increase for one individual.