FORMER JUNIOR MINISTER Róisín Shortall has waived her entitlement to over €33,000 in severance pay following her resignation as the Minister for State in charge of primary care.
Shortall quit in September amid disputes with senior minister James Reilly over the allocation of primary care centres – but was not entitled to any kind of ministerial pension because she had not served in office for more than two years.
In lieu of this, Shortall was entitled to about €33,100 in severance pay, to be paid incrementally until April 2014 – but the former Labour TD has said she is not accepting any payments.
“I actually instructed officials not to pay me this money,” Shortall told TheJournal.ie.
The Dublin North-West TD sits as an independent in the Dáil after resigning her membership of the Labour parliamentary party alongside her resignation as a junior minister.
Laws governing the payment of pensions and severance pay to former ministers, enacted in 2001, outlined that Shortall would be entitled to receive 75 per cent of her ministerial salary for the first six months after she had left.
This would mean six monthly payments of €2,336, which amounts to three-quarters of the monthly €3,114 salary that junior ministers receive on top of their TDs’ wage of €92,672.
Because Shortall had served for 19 months, she would also be entitled to another twelve months of payments worth €1,557 and a single payment of €409 in April 2013.
Shortall’s successor as the Minister of State responsible for Primary Care, Alex White, was in line for a pay increase of €27,870 when he stepped up to fill Shortall’s role.
Though White was entitled to the full €37,370 salary, his promotion meant he had to give up a role as chairman of the Oireachtas finance committee, which brought with it an annual allowance of €9,500.
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