{"id":1544,"date":"2021-04-20T16:29:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T15:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/watt-should-permanently-waive-e81000-pay-increase\/"},"modified":"2021-04-20T16:29:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T15:29:24","slug":"watt-should-permanently-waive-e81000-pay-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/ga\/watt-should-permanently-waive-e81000-pay-increase\/","title":{"rendered":"Watt should permanently waive \u20ac81,000 pay increase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Any prospect of the proposed salary increase being backdated should also be discounted immediately<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The incoming permanent Secretary General of the Department of Health, Robert Watt, should permanently waive the \u20ac81,000 pay increase that accompanies his new job, according to Social Democrats co-leader, and PAC Vice Chair, Catherine Murphy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI welcome the decision of Mr Watt to waive this extraordinary salary increase \u2013 but any waiver should be permanent, not temporary.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfirming his appointment today, Mr Watt reportedly said he didn\u2019t believe it was appropriate for his salary to be increased, from \u20ac211,000 to \u20ac292,000, \u201cgiven the current difficult economic conditions the country faces\u201d. This is true, but it is difficult to envision a situation in which economic conditions, no matter how favourable, would justify a salary increase of that magnitude.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr Watt\u2019s statement is also unclear on whether, if economic conditions do improve at some future date, his salary increase will be backdated to the date when he permanently assumed the role he has been doing on an interim basis since January. This should be discounted, immediately.<\/p>\n<p>20 April, 2021<\/p>\n<p>Ends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any prospect of the proposed salary increase being backdated should also be discounted immediately The incoming permanent Secretary General of the Department of Health, Robert Watt, should permanently waive the \u20ac81,000 pay increase that accompanies his new job, according to Social Democrats co-leader, and PAC Vice Chair, Catherine Murphy. \u201cI welcome the decision of Mr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182,88,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catherine-murphy","category-finance","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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