Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in to respond to this Commencement matter, which comes on the back of a very fruitful meeting between the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, and the Labour Party Seanad grouping last week. It is also an issue that has been articulated to us by many councillors. I am sure the same is true of the various party groupings, including my esteemed party colleague, Mary Freehill, and others in my own party. I refer to the gratuity payment, if that is the correct term, which is now to be calculated, based on the pre-2021 salary. My understanding is that this is pretty out of synch with how other gratuity payments are calculated. I think it is contrary to the normal terms and conditions that apply to public sector employees and other officeholders, such as indeed ourselves in both Houses. We know that the gratuity payment is capped at a maximum of 20 years' service, regardless of length of service, by councillors. It just seems unusual to me that it is calculated on the pre-July 2021 salary. I am interested to hear the reasoning for that.

I have spoken to many people in regard to it. When we sent this around to councillors I received pages upon pages of responses from them on how it affects them. There is great umbrage and annoyance evident. I will read some of them out in a moment. There is a sense that the gratuity calculations of elected members should be aligned to their final salary upon retirement rather than the current calculation, which is based on the pre-July 2021 salary. Some of the comments that I got include phrases like, "The prevailing circumstances are out of synch with public service national pay agreements." or "It is an issue of fairness." or "It is shocking to see how undervalued we treat the first port of call in our democracy here in Ireland." or "It is a shabby way to treat local councillors that are available 24-7 all year round."

As a lifelong trade unionist, my take on this is one of fairness.From my experience, for workers who are made redundant or who reach retirement age etc., the calculations of the payments are based on the current salary or the previous year's salary, which is fair and correct. However, when it comes to councillors, the calculations are from very outdated rates, which is inherently unfair. Also, one should not short-change councillors who give a lifetime of service to public life.

The Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, have been engaging with various Departments on this. They have been putting forward proposals and they have done a full costing on this. It has been suggested that the reason for this anomaly is a wording issue regarding the terms “remuneration payment” versus “representation payment”. If that is the case, is this just an issue of wording that needs to be changed? If that is the issue, when will that wording be changed? Or, is this a part of a bigger plan, which is to ascertain what it will cost and whether it will cost the council or the State? If it is an issue of cost, that strikes me as unusual. As I said and has been mentioned before, there are very few or no circumstances I can think of where people's final gratuity is placed on a different year to the one in which they leave the job - whatever that job may be. I therefore think it is unusual.

To conclude, this commencement matter raises the question as to why this calculation is based on the pre-2021 level. Is there a plan to change it? Is it taking a while to change it because of a wording issue, namely, the terms “remuneration payment” versus “representation payment”? If that is the case, when will the new wording be put forward to get this sorted?