Fair play to Enda Kenny

spadder

Kenny to take 5% pay cut

It may be a PR stunt, but it's a good leadership move. Lets see if FF follow suit?

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1010/politics.html

Mena

5% ?

Pure stunt.

brianthebard

No all he has to do is give up any claim to his teaching wage.

mike65

Its bit of a party political stunt, and no don't expect anyone in FF to follow, or industry.

Mike

mydogjack

should be 25% wage cut. twat.

Celticfire

Pay increase to push TD salaries over €100,000




STEPHEN COLLINS, Political Editor

TDs WILL receive a pay rise of some €2,500 a year today under the final phase of the current national pay agreement. It will bring the basic salary to more than €100,000.

The Taoiseach's pay will go up by almost €7,000 a year while senior civil servants and judges will get similar increases under the final 2.5 per cent phase of Sustaining Progress.

All public servants will benefit from the 2.5 per cent award and it will also apply to public service pensions.

The Government recently deferred the implementation of a special pay award of €38,000 for the Taoiseach and €25,000 for Ministers which would have been paid in addition to the national pay rounds.

After the pay rise a backbench TD with less than seven year's experience will earn a basic €100,189 a year. Those with between seven and 10 years service will see their salaries rise to €103,389, while backbenchers with more than 10 years in the Dáil will get €106,567.

Most backbench TDs receive allowances on top of their salary for serving as chairs, vice-chairs or whips on one of the more than 20 Oireachtas committees.

Office holders, who are paid a separate salary for their ministerial positions will get the 2.5 per cent rise on their total income.

The Taoiseach's salary, including his TD's pay, will rise from €278,617 to €285,582 while the Tánaiste's salary will increase from €239,341 to €245,296.

Senators will get a rise in the basic salary to €70,133 with a corresponding rise to €74,607 for those with 10 years service in the Upper House. The salary of the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad will go up from €116,477 to €119,388.

© 2008 The Irish Times

That doesn't take into account expenses that are also paid out at very generous rates. If he brought his wage down to the average industrial wage then I might be impressed. Don't forget his eye is on the bigger ball, Taoiseach's salary for 4 years would more than make up for the shortfall..

BolBill

I thought I was going to read that he had stepped down as FG leader. Lets face it, he was so bad in the last election that nobody is going to vote for him in the next.

A tailors Dummy.

Nice hair Edna.

G'Luck

spadder

FF could steal his thunder by announcing a 10% cut.
Maybe they could say they have stopped accepting brown envelopes too???

McArmalite

spadder wrote: »

Kenny to take 5% pay cut

It may be a PR stunt, but it's a good leadership move. Lets see if FF follow suit?

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1010/politics.html

Wouldn't get them (FG) elected as the government anyway. We'll still be stuck with FF for another while, it's not that FF are much good, but the opposition are so poor.

Fratton Fred

Does he have to buy his own tea?

helimachoptor

Mena wrote: »

5% ?

Pure stunt.

+1 5% of his salary will mean what he earns 95K instead of 100K whoopti fooking do

johnnyboy4711

You will still vote them in in the morning!
Wake up people and vote with your heads.
If you like the look of the country after the Maastricht treaty then vote Yes to Lisbon part 2 and see our country go down the tubes altogether!
j

BolBill

Eh no. No once and that should be the end of it.

mumhaabu

BolBill wrote: »

He was so bad in the last election that nobody is going to vote for him in the next.

I know he was so amazingly bad that h only managed to add twenty seats to the Fine Gaels tally, terrible I tells ya, every single seat in the dail should be FG according to you. Fine Gael will take control of well over 50% of County Councils next June and wait and see, Fianna Fail will be electorallly annihilated and will lose the next General election too.

seamus

Anyone here fancy taking a 5% pay cut?

No? Why not? If that's nothing, then surely you have the backbone to do it?

Yes it's a stunt, but whether you earn €20k or €200k, a 5% pay cut is a pretty hard thing to accept. I'd say it's even harder when you don't actually have to do it.

Enda Kenny is the man that the term "drip" was coined for, but fair play to him. The government were hmming and hawing over it, decided to "postpone" a generous payrise, made some brief gestures to pay cuts, and ultimately did nothing about it.

FG challenged the government to do something drastic, like take pay cuts, and have now put their money where their mouths are (literally) and are taking the pay cut themselves.

loyatemu

its a stunt, but he's making a valid point - TD's salaries have outstripped inflation substantially and are now way ahead of international benchmarks. And thats without even talking about expenses. They could all afford to take 10% cuts at least.

Anyone here fancy taking a 5% pay cut?

No, but I'm not a public representative - they are paid to show leadership in times such as these.

Don't forget his eye is on the bigger ball, Taoiseach's salary for 4 years would more than make up for the shortfall..

He'll never be taoiseach - he won't even be FG leader by the time of the next election.

mydogjack

said it before,say it again; enda,take a 25% cut and come back and talk to us then.

turgon

loyatemu wrote: »

No, but I'm not a public representative - they are paid to show leadership in times such as these.

Neither those the regular worker receive the ridiculous amount of money they give themselves for such little work.

Vegeta

seamus wrote: »

Anyone here fancy taking a 5% pay cut?

No? Why not? If that's nothing, then surely you have the backbone to do it?

Yes it's a stunt, but whether you earn €20k or €200k, a 5% pay cut is a pretty hard thing to accept. I'd say it's even harder when you don't actually have to do it.

Enda Kenny is the man that the term "drip" was coined for, but fair play to him. The government were hmming and hawing over it, decided to "postpone" a generous payrise, made some brief gestures to pay cuts, and ultimately did nothing about it.

FG challenged the government to do something drastic, like take pay cuts, and have now put their money where their mouths are (literally) and are taking the pay cut themselves.

Exactly, at least they're doing something positive.

How can the government preach to us about tightening belts and standing shoulder to shoulder while getting extremely well paid.

"Am because we cant manage a piggy bank let alone a country, we'll have to tax you more to make up for our complete incompetence"

Sound. Bend over and bite the pillow folks this one will be going in dry. I am by no means a partisan of any party but the country has been mismanaged, this is not bashing FF to be "cool" or "popular"

If taxes and rates are going up to pay for government spending then government spending should be controlled and that includes their pay. I say fair play to any politician who agrees to take a wage cut (not freeze) in times of need.

Crash

mydogjack wrote: »

said it before,say it again; Brian,take a 25% cut and come back and talk to us then.

Fixed.

And of course its a stunt, hell if you read the newspiece he says as much. Christ most of you are just bashing it because you don't like Kenny, not because you disagree with it.

Of course its a stunt, of course its a token, but at the same time fair play IMO. what Seamus said about it stands true in my eyes.

jmayo

McArmalite wrote: »

Wouldn't get them (FG) elected as the government anyway. We'll still be stuck with FF for another while, it's not that FF are much good, but the opposition are so poor.

Ok McMarmalade, care to tell us how the opposition are much worse ?
Have they been anywhere near the seat of power for the last 11 years.
These were the years of the great celtic tiger, where the exchequer was getting more money than ever before and yet what have we now ?
It appears we don't even have a pot to p*** in :rolleyes:
The only lasting thing the celtic tiger has left us a lot of us is it's rather large droppings and they are now beginning to stink big time. :rolleyes:

After 11 years of the great ff/Pd experiment where are we?
Most people are way deeper in personal debt.
We are all facing the scenario where we the taxpayers have to bail out the banks (the builders, the developers), private sector jobs are disappearing, taxes will have to increase to preserve the over inflated public sector employees and the measly public services will be cut even more.
Yeah I can see how the opposition have a lot to live up to :rolleyes:

Edit: just spotted something ... For anyone used to the History forum seeing Fratton Fred thanking McArmalite is akin to Iris Robinson having tea with David Norris prior to visting the vatican

Breezer

Going Forward wrote: »

Fixed.

And of course its a stunt, hell if you read the newspiece he says as much. Christ most of you are just bashing it because you don't like Kenny, not because you disagree with it.

Of course its a stunt, of course its a token, but at the same time fair play IMO. what Seamus said about it stands true in my eyes.

+1. Genuinely can't believe the reaction here. He calls for a pay cut, it doesn't come, so he takes one himself, and now he's the bad guy because he didn't sell all his worldly assets and give the money to the taxpayer? Of course it's not going to change the situation but it's more than Brian and Co. have done.

mike65

Amusingly he dissed this idea last week during a discussion on The Last Word (with Matt Cooper), the Greens had floated it and Kenny said it was tokenism and said the government should concentrate on efficency rather than stunts.

Mike

Y2J_MUFC

Fair play to Enda Kenny? My hole.

Its the most obvious attempt at a PR stunt seen for quite a while.

Put it in context, 5% means what to him? 115,000 instead of 120,000? That just means one less maid for two months. 5% may mean a hell of a lot to the ordinary worker, earning an average wage, but it means NOTHING to him.

Its a blatant attempt to paint himself in a good light and to generate positive news about him. In reality, this means absolutely nothing to him, and it means absolutely nothing to the tax payer.

I'd prefer if he did something productive to actually earn the wages he is currently getting rather than wasting time with absolutely meaningless stunts. He obviously must think people are naive and can't see through him. I'd much prefer he did something useful.

SeanW

It's a little bit rich calling this a PR stunt given that this time last year, the FF government went into emergency session on a Friday night to put about 200,000 then legally driving 2nd provisional licenseholders off the road with 3 1/2 days notice, oh and by the way we're also awarding ourselves an obscene pay hike ... as recommended by an independent body, of course.

As we now know, they had to delay both.

If you're looking for PR stunts, better to look at the gov't parties.

NIBBS

seriously, anybody that believes this to be anthing other than a political stunt should be ashamed of themselves. Having read through this thread I've seen mention that "they" (refering to FG) carried through and took a pay cut - unless there has been a change this evening this is not the case - it's an individual making a decision off his own bat not a party decision, if FG had of gone 5% across the board, even at ministerial level I would say fine, but they haven't. the % here is purely symbolic measure - and again for someone to actually say that 5% of €20k is the same as 5% of €200k maybe is an indication of how sad we have become as a nation.

In my own personal opinion all ministers, if not all TD's should be automatically having their pay reduced for the shambolic handling of everything they do.
FG and Labour should be docked salary as they fail at every election to mount any sort of opposition to vote for, it's very easy to sit back and take €100k a year for 4 years if you are not totally focussed on changing the incumbent govt.

It's all pretty much irrelevant anyway, I don't see any of them cutting their pay by a significant amount, surely they would be better off making sure the richest people in the land actually pay some tax in the country they live in.

BENDYBINN

if enda took a 70% cut he would be still overpaid

Breezer

Folks, no one's denying that it's a stunt, least of all Enda Kenny. He called it a "symbolic gesture," and it's done in an effort to highlight the indifference of the Government, which has not taken any kind of pay cut despite repeated calls to do so since last year. Of course it draws attention to FG; FG is a political organisation that needs votes if it wants to implement its policies, so it makes sense to try get attention focused on it. Not everyone is an intellectual who watches Oireachtas Report and reads The Economist, any political party needs to be making headlines from time to time.

As regards doing something useful, FG released an in-depth policy document today outlining exactly what the Government has done to cause this recession, and what Fine Gael would do differently in order to get us out of it. Have a read of it if you want to see something a bit more concrete. I realise that takes a bit more effort than sitting on high horses.

beggars_bush

Enda might give up the teaching job he is on a career break from too

give some young teacher a chance to get a permanent position

he'll be entitled to two pensions when he 'retires'

Crash

Y2J_MUFC wrote:

Put it in context, 5% means what to him? 115,000 instead of 120,000? That just means one less maid for two months. 5% may mean a hell of a lot to the ordinary worker, earning an average wage, but it means NOTHING to him.

You get paid for a job. No matter what the material difference, its not like he's earning a mil a year, where you can say **** like that. Also, your maths is terrible, take a refresher course.

Its a blatant attempt to paint himself in a good light and to generate positive news about him. In reality, this means absolutely nothing to him, and it means absolutely nothing to the tax payer.

Of course it means nothing to the tax payer. thats why he referred to it as symbolic.

sym·bol·ic [sim-bol-ik] /sɪmˈbɒl
1.serving as a symbol of something (often fol. by of).
2.of, pertaining to, or expressed by a symbol.
3.characterized by or involving the use of symbols: a highly symbolic poem.
4.(in semantics, esp. formerly) pertaining to a class of words that express only relations.
5.Computers. expressed in characters, usually nonnumeric, that require translation before they can be used

NIBBS wrote: »

seriously, anybody that believes this to be anthing other than a political stunt should be ashamed of themselves.

And they quite readily admit it. Your issue?

In my own personal opinion all ministers, if not all TD's should be automatically having their pay reduced for the shambolic handling of everything they do.

And so three have, yet you fail to commend it?


I honestly can't believe this - Yes its a publicity stunt, yes its nowhere near as crippling as if you were earning 20,000 and did the same thing, but its more than our government, who are in power and have the ability, and have used said ability, to give td's pay rises to the point where they're earning over 100,000 euro a year despite the fact that I can count 2 out of 15 ministers currently that I have even the tiniest shred of respect for and would consider that they earn it, yet people are more than willing to turn around and attack the opposition? tell you what, as a quiz, if 10 of yee can turn around tomorrow night and tell me what occured in the dail tomorrow (even watching the oireachtas report will count) I will rescind that argument staight away. As it stands, no wonder FF end up in government each election.

edit: bad case come back to me monday evening as opposed to tomorrow, forgot it was a weekend

galwayrush

Well done Enda, it's a positive move in setting a good example.