Coveney's Patriotic Special Adviser beats pay cap, leaves after five months.

[He3]

Coveney comes out of it poorly, for going out on a limb for this guy and seeing him leave faster than a George Lee bedtime story about what he did during the economic war.

The advisor is a job rat, but that's his business. As you point out, if the opportunity to job hop is there, people do it.

Coveney admitted disappointment is I guess an understatement.

[greengoose2]

Coveney admitted disappointment is I guess an understatement.

He's been outed, simple as.

[Scitlipo]

Or else he fancies someone in his office

No. He's happily married and part of his outlook on life is to give something back to his country and humanity.

[Scitlipo]

Bet he has a beard!

Intermittently, and he's also the life and soul of the party. Not Irish, but after 3 days here could string coherent sentences together as Gaelige from his observation of irish road signs. Self taught in Arabic, swapping English lessons for Japanese lesons(non-native English speaker) and prone to jiving in the car once disco comes on the radio.

[He3]

Perhaps it's time we asked what exactly we mean by "public service". To me it means working for the benefit of your country, with decent remuneration, but remuneration which is far below what one would receive in the private sector.
A pal of mine is one of the world's top biomolecular scientists. He's repeatedly headhunted by private pharmaceutical companies in the expectation that he will design some new drugs that will make enormous profits for the company. He has consistently declined all offers, preferring instead to work for the state, at a salary of about €50k. His reasoning is that he wants the results of his work to be in the public domain, and he lives comfortably on his salary. To me, that's an example of public service.

That is practical patriotism. He is not alone, and like others, does not beat his own drum.

[greengoose2]

Has this one hit the graveyard?

[Scitlipo]

Has this one hit the graveyard?

Here's a homegrown example of altruism.
This guy has devised a postcode system which is FREE to use-its open source, yet the Rabbitte's dept insists on giving €8m to some company that wants to sell a system to the government.

"Not selling anything - just proposing the OpenPostcode (Open Postcode for Ireland) - which is free and opensource. Made me a nice wee presentation to show it in action. It's just plain simple to calculate - even have a spreadsheet in action to show the conversions.

https://docs.google.com/presentation...d.g1aa9789_0_0

Feedback welcome."

[darkknight]

IT

Mr Leamy told The Irish Times at the weekend: “Pure and simple, I got an opportunity in London to work with a private equity group which was too good to turn down. My intention was always to work with the Minister in the short to medium term, but this probably came up a little sooner than we were both expecting.”

His replacement is expected to be approved by Cabinet shortly.

No problem for good old Simon. He quickly recruited his old mate Ross to replace his other old mate Fergal, and insisted that the pay cap had to be breached yet again!

Fury as Coveney flouts rules to pay spin doctor €110k

Having breached the pay cap when appointing Mr Leamy, the minister repeated the move just months later when Mr Mac Mathuna was installed.

The agriculture expert was installed in January, having previously worked for Glanbia and consultancy firm McKinsey.

A spokesperson for Mr Coveney today said that the two men's experience justified the move.

"The Guidelines on Staffing of Ministerial Offices provide that Special Advisers be placed on the first point of the Principal Officer scale except where the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, with the agreement of the Minister for Finance, sanctions a higher salary rate.

"Given Mr Mac Mathuna's previous salary and experience in the agri food industry, remuneration at a higher rate was approved. Similar circumstances applied in Mr Leamy's case."