A pension in the hand

THE investigation carried out by The Irish Times this week which reveals the worth of 15 Cabinet ministers is an eye opener if there ever was one. It has revealed, “The 15 members of Cabinet will have pension entitlements by the end of the Dáil term that would cost €36,301,205 if bought in the market today”.

 

The most difficult thing to swallow in the revelation is not that the ministers will enjoy such a well-funded retirement but that they will do so when so many other people around the country are living on drastically reduced pensions because of cuts imposed by this and the previous government. I have argued on many occasions for the case that a pension is a well-earned entitlement to be enjoyed at the end of a working life and that the dominant logic of private sector mean-spiritedness with regard to it is incorrect. I stand by this stance but feel there is a major inequality in the reality revealed by The Irish Times investigation.

Ministers in Cabinet have a difficult job. They are, whatever your personal feelings on their policies or efficacy, public servants. As such, they deserve a pension which rewards this work. Given that they have adopted the mantra of the market in recent years and repeatedly informed the Irish public that old public sector pensions are unsustainable, their gargantuan payouts seem at odds with the gospel they are preaching. Those to whom they preach their gospel of austerity and private sector principles will have worked for the public sector for decades and will not receive even a fraction of what they will receive for a short period in office. There is no other way to describe this other than very unfair. It brings to mind the smoker who warns their children ‘do as I say, not as I do’. What makes the pension even more hard to believe is the fact that, “The value of the pension entitlements built up by ministers during a five-year term in government is in fact greater than the amount of salary they receive. A minister is paid an annual salary of €169,275, making for €846,375 over a five-year term.”

It doesn’t take an accountant to see there is something very awry in this. What is disappointing is that it once again reinforces the belief that politicians are creaming cash from the State and living the high life while holding public office to serve the needs of the people. Coming on the back of recent reports about expenses and travel allowances, this adds to the destructive narrative of politicians as villains and swindlers. This is a false image as many do work very hard but the image exists and they are doing little to dispel it by claiming such generous compensation.

I think it important to stress the point that I am not arguing against generous pensions. The attacks on public sector pensions in recent years have been, in my opinion, a travesty and grossly unfair. What is frustrating is that again, we find that politicians are not suffering the same kinds of financial penalties they are imposing on everybody else.

When I was 22 and starting my first job in journalism, an executive came to the newsroom and told us that if we wanted to have anything approaching a decent life when we retired, we had better start a pension fund then and there. I was told that my late start in this had already placed me at a significant disadvantage. At the time, I laughed, as retirement seemed like another universe from the one I inhabited.

Having just started out in the world of my profession, I found it difficult to imagine a time when I would retire but of course, the advisor was correct. I was no different to any other worker in the private sector. I would need to begin saving from the moment I was employed so that I wouldn’t find myself destitute when the time came to retire. In the intervening years, I and those of a similar age, have come to know the reality of working in the private sector, that nobody will help you if you do not help yourself. Pensions and other safety nets are a personal responsibility and ones, which must be carefully managed in order to stave off disaster in the ‘golden years’. A private-sector culture has come to dominate whereby a decent pension has come to be regarded as some kind of treat or specialist treatment. This is not the case of course. It is simply human decency that if a person has worked all their lives, they should be able to retire without the spectre of poverty looming large over their lives.

As this private-sector culture has come to dominate, this freedom from worry in later life is no longer guaranteed by any means. Because pension funds are so inextricably intertwined with the global financial market, recent years have marked a new low in people’s futures. What has gone in will not now, in some cases, guarantee that anything will come out. Traders were literally gambling with people’s futures.

Now that Ireland is essentially under the control of the IMF and their structural adjustments, we can expect the good State pension to become increasingly a thing of the past as the neoliberal ideology they preach is forced upon a broken nation. Those starting work now will be in even more danger of destitution in later life if they wait until their early 20s to start a fund.

I am not asking for ministers to have their pensions slashed, I am asking that all public servants receive similar terms to those enjoyed by politicians. They will argue the nation would be bankrupted again if this were to happen. I would say that if that is the case, they should take a cut to bring themselves in line with others. Why not meet somewhere in the middle? Ministerial work is important and tough but there needs to be equality for all workers rather than the stratification, which exists at the moment. Everyone deserves a decent retirement and current situation only reinforces the perception that politicians are in the game solely for their own benefit.