According to a report in the Irish Times, head staff at the National Treasury Management Agency argued against a pay cap of €200,000.
Head staff at the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) had the cheek to tell the Minister for Finance that imposing a pay cap of €200,000 on its top earners would have “serious detrimental consequences” for the taxpayer.
You see, NTMA manages our national debt and is ‘the parent’ of the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA). It happens to fall outside the public sector pay grades which are all capped at €200,000. So basically, the big swingers in NTMA can get paid what they like.
This is why the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, asked NTMA on December 21 of last year to cut top pay rates.
The chief executive of NTMA, John Corrigan, replied to the ministers request saying: “I must stress the NTMA’s increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining key staff with the appropriate level of experience to work with us on issues vital to the State…
“I believe that the application of a salary cap of €200,000 without any regard to private sector analogues will directly impede the NTMA in this work with serious detrimental consequences for the exchequer and the taxpayer.”
In other words, if you don’t pay the big bucks our workers will ‘shag-off’ elsewhere.
According to the Irish Times, NTMA is still in talks with the Department of Finance on whether the pay cap should be implemented or not.
