The three ‘Super Junior Ministers’ have agreed to give back the almost 16,000 in extra salary the Dáil approved for them last week.
Instead Jack Chambers, Hildegarde Naughten and Pippa Hackett will split the two existing allowances and will get a wage increase of a little over 10,000 euro each.
It was announced yesterday that Cabinet had agreed to take a 10% cut in their salary.
It’s since emerged that they’re actually financially better off than members of the previous Government, as they had waived pay restoration increases due to them!
The three ministers sitting at the Cabinet table will instead share €32,000 worth of allowances between them – rather than getting a €16,000 allowance each.
The Government has announced that Jack Chambers, Hildegarde Naughton and Pippa Hackett “have decided to waive and gift back to the State the increased allocation which was approved by the Dáil last week”.
The Taoiseach admitted the issue around the pay of super junior ministers could have been “handled better collectively by the Government, I would acknowledge that.”
“The Government today has taken a decision, which was in process, to give back 10 per cent of its salaries back to the State as and from the commencement of Government,” Mr Martin said.
“So that is a 10 per cent cut in the rate of pay from Taoiseach right down to the entire Government and Ministers of State as well. That has been formalised today by the Cabinet.”
