It was always slightly odd to bench mark yourself against the private sector in this country when the jobs are hardly comparable.
The recent direct comparison surveys of TD pay and many other areas of Western Europe show how overpaid certain sectors have been.
This is very true of the private sectors who are now taking large pay cuts to amend this.

There cannot be a divide between the public and private sectors - both are reliant on eachother as can be clearly seen now.

Why for once can't a Minister in this Government make a decision rather than passing on the responsibility to some unelected group to mull over and make suggestions to him which then have to be reviewed by some other group while continually distancing the Minister from any culpability when a decision is finally arrived at.

does anyone know whats actuallly been done already in relation to this?

i seems to remember a "voluntary" 10% reduction last budget , with the taoiseach forgoing the 35k raise ahern had set up to get for himself when he had the job as well.

and there was talk of a 10% drop in expenses and 25% in travel expenses in this budget but i seem to remember another drop too, so where the hell do we actually STAND now?

the elephant in the room is indeed the senior CS guys who arent in the pubic eye and get ridiculous wages. christ i dont know how they can justify a teacher getting 68k a year so god alone knows what insantity is going on with the big guys.

politicians wages have always been defended as being pegged to those guys so if there is to be a 20% cut it makes sense that it should hit those guys as well though TBH im with what some of you guys are saying in that it should be alot more like a third.

seriously we should never had got to the stage where a minister like mary harney or micheal martin earned more than angela merkel. its only a pity it took a depression to point this out.

I do think he should have made an interim decision of a 10% cut ... but making a decision about how much you pay yourself ... is not proper

So an external group is needed, and he has handed them interesting terms of reference

cYp

__________________
"Yawn , am I alive yet ?"

This is an excellent opportunity for Cowen to show leadership and say " I am not waiting for a commitee to report given the dire economic situation. We can no longer pay ourselves so much more than our fellow Eurozone countries through borrowing and creating massive future debt for our children and grandchildren. I along with all public sector employees will take a 30% pay cut spread over next two years to allow people to adjust their spending. When times are good again we will revisit pay and conditions but for now we must do everything to reduce the cost of running the government and public services for if we do not our economic soverignty is at real risk. We the government will do everything to ensure the cost of living here falls to ease the burden of less pay and accordingly we will have a vat holiday for rest of the year. Together we will get through this" or somehting similar.

So they're going to benchmark their pay against pay in Croatia, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Lithuania, maybe Scotland?

The basic salaries of ordinary members of parliament in these countries is as follows:

The average salary of a Croatian member of parliament is €2,500 per month (€30,000 per year).

In Norway, they get NOK 694,500 (€79,032.95) per year.

In Denmark, they get €78,260 per year.

In Finland, they get €5,950 per month (€71,400 per year).

In Slovakia, they get "a salary amounting to three times the average monthly salary of a worker in the national economy of Slovakia, rounded up to the nearest SKK 100" (Slovakia adopted the euro at the start of 2009).

The "average salary for year 2008 [was] 21 226 SKK = 704,6 € per month".

So they would have got 63,798 SKK per mounth, rounded up to 63,800 SKK per month, (€2,117.85 pm; €25,414.20 per year) in 2008.

In Lithuania, they get "paid a monthly basic salary" which is three times the "prior [month's]...average salary".

The average monthly salary in Lithuania for Q3 2008 was LTL 2,319.90 (€671.89) or €8,062.68 per year.

So the Lithuanian parliamentarians would have got LTL 6,959.70 per month in Q3 2008 (€2,015.67 pm) or €24,188.04 per year.

However, the parliament has voted to reduce its salaries by 20% this year; so their annual salaries will be about 80% of €24,188.04 = €19,350.43.

An ordinary MSP in Scotland gets £53,091 (€59,613) per year.

The average basic salary earned by an ordinary member of parliament across these seven parliaments is €51,867.22 per year.

The current basic salary for a TD in Ireland is €95,363 per year.

A 20% decrease would bring that down to €76,290.40 per year.

Is it true that Albert Reynolds and Bertie have a complimentary Mercedes and two drivers each at their disposal for the rest of their lives. Anyone know how much this is costing Ireland Inc every year. Are their others in the same boat. Also just wondering if anyone knows if the two Bush's (past US Presidents) have been given similar percs now that they are back in Texas.

Exactly,also numbers of TDs needs to be factored in, rates of unemployment, GDP growth etc. We are no where near as rich in public services and infrastructure as the Nordic countries , simple measures of GDP/GNP does not show how good a society's public infrastructure is, we dont have state creches, great public transport, great hospitals etc etc.

No committee needed here. For govt and dept finance senior mgt. 20% cut for salary portion under 100k and 30% for over 100k portion.
And no one can earn more than 150k? That's called leadership

Yep, that sounds about right. I'd also ensure that the expenses are capped at a max of 30K for TDs' and 50K for Ministers (and that in my opinion is generous).