Mary Lou McDonald had a point. The Government is trying to hold down the inevitable pay increases for public servants while a series of very large pay increases are being signed off for the leaders of semi-State bodies. McDonald told the Dáil on Tuesday that the €95,000 salary increase for DAA’s chief executive far exceeded the entire salary of a “nurse, a teacher, an SNA or a firefighter”. Even if public sector salaries are not generally as low as the unions make them out to be, this is mostly true. You don’t have to be a swivel-eyed revolutionary to see that a lot of people might have an issue with that. Economic populism might be short-sighted as an analysis of society and limited as a political strategy but that doesn’t mean it is wrong about everything.

There has been a procession of semi-State chief executives lining up for pay increases this year following an independent review of their salaries and recruitment last year. It will not amaze you to learn that the independent review did not conclude that they were overpaid and needed to have their salaries cut. Users of public services and utilities managed by the chief executives – Dublin Airport being a case in point, actually – might be surprised to learn that they were underpaid, but that only shows only that they don’t understand the complexity of the questions involved. Funnily enough, I have never come across a review of high-level jobs in the public service that didn’t conclude that the top people should be paid more. You have to get the best people, I suppose.

Sinn Féin has been fairly and squarely chronicling the increases in chief executives’ pay all year. At the last survey, pay rises had been........

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