TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY has been accused of backtracking on his own pre-election promises regarding the amount being paid to his key advisors.
Kenny faced barbs in the Dáil today from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, when the latter reminded him of a pledge to cap the pay of special advisers at €92,000 a year.
Parliamentary questions in recent days have confirmed that two of Kenny’s current advisers – chief of staff Mark Kennelly and special adviser Andrew McDowell – both earn €168,000 per year.
Kenny also employs another two special advisers – Paul O’Brien and Angela Flanagan – who earn €80,051 a year, while the special advisor to chief whip Paul Kehoe, Mark O’Doherty, also earns that amount.
Kenny defended the pay given to the advisers by saying they earned “substantially less” than their predecessors, and that each of his advisers had “very long and considerable experience”.
“There are different categories [of pay] for different experiences, as you know,” Kenny said.
The Taoiseach had earlier denied that he was pulling a political stunt by delaying the publication of the government’s comprehensive spending review until after the Presidential election on October 27.
The accusations had been levelled by Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin, who said the work for the review – which was due to outline the general framework for the forthcoming Budgets – would have been completed in July.
Kenny explained that the review had not been completed yet, because public expenditure minister Brendan Howlin had not completed his analysis of spending yet.
“Believe you me, Deputy Martin, to carry out a detail analysis… is not something you can do overnight,” Kenny complained.
Later in Questions to the Taoiseach, Kenny said the constitutional convention would be named shortly after the election, and that it would consider the matter of allowing Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland the opportunity to vote.
The convention would also consider whether a President’s term of office should be shorter than the usual seven years.
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