The Minister for Finance says he can “absolutely understand” the anger over the decision to approve a €16,000 pay rise for Government ministers of state.
On Friday, the Dáil approved legislation ensuring all three junior ministers that sit at Cabinet will enjoy the pay rise.
It means Fianna Fáil's Jack Chambers and Fine Gael's Hildegarde Naughten will now get €140,000 a year, while Green Party Senator Pippa Hackett, who sits at Cabinet as a junior minister at the Department of Agriculture, will receive €123,186.
Previous governments have made do with two ‘super junior’ ministerial salaries.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe says the Government wanted to make sure all three junior ministers were being offered equal pay for equal work.
“We were dealing with a specific matter in relation to the fact we have a number of ministers of state around the Cabinet table that were being paid differently and we were looking to get to a point where if they were all doing the same work they would all be paid the same,” he said.
The Government approved the rise the same week it published the July Stimulus Package.
The package extended the Pandemic Unemployment Payment was extended until April of next year; however, it will be reduced over time and no new applicants will be accepted from September.
He said people should place the pay-rise “in the context of a huge, huge variety of different measures that we announced last week that are all about getting people back to work and all about growing incomes again.”
Asked if he was suggesting the ministerial pay rise and the stimulus package were somehow related, he said: “I am not saying that at all and I am not sure how you could have drawn that inference from what I have said.”
“The argument that I am making is that last week, while I understand that the decision that was taken around minister of state pay has, as I said, caused annoyance to many, I am also saying that, in the same week those decisions were made, many other decisions were made that are about helping our citizens get a job and helping our citizens and our employers at a time of great difficulty.”
