IDA chief who urged lower pay won't cut own wage
HE suggested that workers in multi-national companies should face wage cuts of 15pc -- but now it has emerged that Barry O'Leary, the chief executive of IDA Ireland, is not taking one himself.
Mr O'Leary was one of the senior public servants who was included in Finance Minister Brian Lenihan's appeal for a 10pc voluntary pay cut.
But Mr O'Leary told the Irish Independent that he would not be taking the voluntary pay cut.
The chief of the nation's inward investment agency said he had already taken a substantial cut to his gross salary of around €200,000, due to tax increases introduced by the Government.
"In my case, its 21pc I know I'm down and that's a combination of 10pc for the pension levy, which is effectively a pay cut, and the rest," he said.
In last October's budget, Mr Lenihan announced that ministers would be taking a 10pc compulsory pay cut and left it as a voluntary option for other TDs, senators and senior civil servants.
"Other public servants in leadership and senior positions may wish to consider whether it is appropriate for them to make a similar move in current circumstances," he said.
According to new figures from the Department of Finance, around 60 senior public servants have taken a voluntary 10pc pay cut.
They include the 15 secretary generals of government departments, as well as 15 TDs and five senators who have volunteered for the 10pc cut to their salaries of €100,000 and €70,000 respectively.
Others who have taken the voluntary pay cut include: President Mary McAleese, Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, Human Rights Commission president Maurice Manning, An Bord Pleanala chief executive John O'Connor, the Energy Regulator Michael G Tutty and the heads of CIE, Dublin Bus, Iarnrod Eireann and Bus Eireann.
But, according to a Department of Finance source, the number of senior public servants volunteering to take a 10pc pay cut has fallen since the introduction of the public sector pension levy.
Mr O'Leary had angered unions when he made his comments about the potential need for wage cuts of up to 15pc among around 6,000 of the 136,000 people employed in IDA-supported companies.
But he said he had to give the warning due to the pressures that these companies were under.
"If a company with 1,000 people closed in four months' time and the discussion was had on could more have been done, we'd be negligent if we weren't highlighting that in a small number of cases this is an issue," he said.
IDA is currently dealing with an unnamed company with five facilities (in the US, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic and Ireland) which wants to cut that number down to three.
It has found that Ireland is the most expensive of those facilities and is exploring the idea of further wage cuts and further use of automation (with some jobs losses) to stave off a total closure.
The IDA's annual report for 2008 revealed that 8,837 jobs were created but 10,044 were lost -- leading to a net loss of 1,207 jobs overall.
- Michael Brennan Political Correspondent
