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THE IRISH MEDICAL Organisation has told its members that it managed to halve an estimated €20 million in pension entitlements to its former chief executive, George McNeice, before his retirement which was announced yesterday.
In an email to its more than 5,000 members IMO President Dr Paul McKeown says that it had no choice but to pay a total remuneration package of €9.7 million to George McNeice who will retire in March.
However the IMO says in the email that McNeice has no active management role within the organisation as of yesterday having reached almost 30 years of service with the body. The IMO could not be reached for comment this evening.
In a statement yesterday, McKeown noted the “more than a six-fold increase on the number of members involved in the late 1980’s” at the IMO as well as the “very challenging time in the health services in this country”.
The email to members, seen by TheJournal.ie, states that McNeice had negotiated his contractual entitlements many years ago with the organisation left exposed by the changing economic circumstances.
McKeown says in the email that he shares the anger of members in relation to the issue but also notes that McNeice acted within his rights given his contractual entitlements.
The email details the steps that led to yesterday’s announcement including legal advice which said that it was unlikely a court challenge to McNeice’s remuneration package would be successful.
The organisation estimates, based on independent taxation and actuarial advice, that under the terms of his contract McNeice would have been entitled to in the region of €20 million in pension and other provisions.
The IMO’s management committee, through negotiations with McNeice’s representatives in recent weeks, managed to secure 50 per cent reduction to this figure with McNeice now departing the IMO next year with an overall settlement of €9.7 million, according to the email.
This includes a pension fund of €4.5 million, a contractual termination payment of €1.5 million and delayed pension payments of €3.75 million, which will cost €2.6 million in today’s values.
The organisation insists that membership subscriptions from doctors are protected and will not be used to finance the pension as this is already provided for within current IMO financial resources.
A comprehensive review of governance procedures at the IMO has already been undertaken and it will now include a review of the procedures surrounding remuneration to ensure that an issue like that with McNeice does not occur again, McKeown says in the email.
Interim management arrangements have been put in place for the coming months and a special meeting of members has been convened for 12 January, the message adds.
In a statement yesterday McNeice said that it was a “great honour” to have served as chief executive of the IMO, adding: “I am confident that the IMO will continue to represent its members professionally and responsibly and play its role as a voice of reason and compromise for many years to come.”
The IMO negotiates on behalf of doctors with the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health.
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Bit harsh, how could he manage on half his pension
Seeing that he quoted the phrase in his retirement speech, how about a bit of ‘reason and compromise’ from this chancer himself?
And members of this union have been paying subs to keep him and his pension going. Trust me , doctors are very angry today. Not all have such a fat salary and pension. Most of the journal readership will probably red thumb , but many doctors are leaving this sinking ship because the health service is crap. The best have left or are just demoralised and exhausted. Those holding up what’s left of the system are struggling. it’s galling that this union which did f*** all for doctors paid a man a huge salary and even huger pension
This has to be a piss take…????
Do the likes of McNiece and McSharry and the other greed merchants think they will live forever ?
( Maybe that’s what they need the money for )
I think this is morally repugnant but sadly typical of this society , but it’s the clowns in the IMO that signed this outrageous contract that should be truly ashamed
If you aren’t a payed up member onmf IMO what does it matter to you?
Joan they only piss take is out of us we do not know what is really goin on , i was in the masters court in the four courts on thursday and i heard a solicitor who was representing a man from clonmel against revenue say her client had a partner in the form of a director from ANGLO IRISH BANK that he was unaware of why is the media not chasing this one up ?
Did he find a cure for cancer or something??? Wtf!!!
20million, the presidents of the united states is lucky to walk away with this kind of money when retiring. But running the worlds biggest economy and power house is nothing compared to being head of the doctors and nurses in Ireland! We really are that stupid!
And the gravy train rolls on and on……
W.T.F Outrageous amount of money
this is obscene, being very very sick and disabled, i am asked to take cuts in just about everything, and we hear of this man getting this at retirement age.
at aged 60yrs i cannot even afford now to fill my oil tank, what kind of message are we giving out here?
Wasn’t he “entitled” to it? (That word should be removed from the dictionary)
Greedy private sector for ya
Agreed Alan. Outrageous.
Why no wealth tax? FFS
Unbelievable. So angry cant write anything else
Me too. I can not get my head around it to be honest …
I know doctors who are just so hard working and kind and
money is not their god . This arrogant buffoon just makes
a mockery of their good work and goodness.
WHEN WILL YOU ALL WAKE UP THE IRISH GOVERNMENT WILL NEVER CHANGE
NOT ONE OF THEM SF INCLUDED WILL WALK AWAY FROM PENSIONS SET IN STONE . THEY WILL SAY ANYTHING TO GET A VOTE BUT ONCE IN PLACE BEHIND CLOSED DOORS THEY WILL CHAT IT GOES LIKE THIS .
HEY lets not be stupid the salary and pension was dedcided long before we came here leave it as it is . AND AS WE DID NOT PUT IT IN PLACE WE CAN NOT BE RESPONSILBLE.
Sad but true.
Thomas James …..we would be hard pressed to find a government anywhere on this planet that is not looking after its own interests….some more obviously than others…..tis posited!
Thanks for posting this story on Friday night!
Bleaurgh!
There is only one solution for greedy people- tax any income over E150000 PA at 60 to 80 per cent. Taking such pensions is legalised theft.
Populist nonsense, discourages entrepeneurship. If a businessman risks everything (and many do), the rare ones that succeed should not be penalised.
‘Contractual termination payment’?? But he wasn’t terminated … He retired!
Aww folks,the criticism is quite unfair… I was thinking of organising a collection for him to make up the difference….
Seriously,I couldn’t spend a million in my lifetime.
This is an absolute joke … Disgraceful !
This must be a joke? Watch Irish Pictorial Weekly for the truth about Ireland,so funny but true
Its disgraceful even quarter of a million would be outrageous. When his pension can be cut why not also cut ministers pensions too?
John
McNeice agreed to a reduction in the value of his pension, it was not “cut”.
A cut would imply he had no choice but to take the reduction, but as was stated “legal advice which said that it was unlikely a court challenge to McNeice’s remuneration package would be successful”.
The reason a cut could not be applied to his pension is that the courts in this country have always found that a pension is considered private property, which is protected by the constitution. The only way to change this would be to have a referendum on the matter.
The only people who can provide for a referendum are the Government, and you can’t be silly enough to expect Enda & his “bitches” to propose a change to the constitution that would reduce their own pensions now do you?
This has nothing to do with the government, it’s the IMO. Dumb ass membership voted and approved this pension down through the years……. And doctors are smart, right?
The country was steered like the titanic into a disaster and the people are treated like steerage
The either demand change or accept it
this is what we have come to expect from the professional classes in this country.
Its not necessarily the professional classes.
Its the dominant and unchallengable ideology of neoliberal monetarism, which values everything in financial terms and has lead to an internalisation of this sick world view so that people value themselves in financial terms and compare their success as humans by the relative sizes of their wallets.
It not uncommon, and seldom questioned. Nor is it anything new. Oscar Wilde nutshelled it when he wrote of the cynic as someone who ‘..knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Swift nailed it three centuries back with his depiction of the Irish aristocracy and their refined barbarity in his cannibalistic satire ‘A Modest Proposal’, 6 pages of black hilarity unmatched since(well woth the google).
It will not be rectified until we recognise it for the psychosis it is, in that it inverts human values into animal idiocy(in the Greek sense of ‘idiot’ being someone so locked in their private interests they had no developed sense of public responsibility, and as such did not qualify for membership of the demos). We have reversed the Greek understanding and elevated money as the measure of all things.
The symptoms of the collective psychosis are all around us, but so is the machinery of denial-promotion. But more insidious still is the fact that it is internalised generally as ‘the way of the world’; and as such seen as unchallengable.
Former Junior Minister of Health Roisin Shortall said on the radio recently that there are 2 kinds of people who get involved in providing health services. 1 are about helping the sick, the other are involved to make money.
I wonder which type George McNeice is?
Culm
You make an interesting point but there are problems with your view. The first is that we have no knowledge of George’s basic salary for all of his thirty years service with the IMO. It could have been relatively modest. Secondly we have no idea of the constituent elements of his pension fund. For example it could have been an investment policy that struck it lucky and the contract said he would be the beneficiary. Finally this employment contract with its benefits package would have been agreed with the Board of the IMO that included at the time some of the leading spokespersons for the Medical profession i.e. the Doctors themselves.
Michael, just out of curiosity, if his salary was “relatively modest” should his pension not reflect that? I find it absolutely disgusting. Nobody deserves that amount, whether it’s for 30, 50 or 60 years of service. My father is still working full time at the age of 70 because he could not live on the pension he would be entitled to, he starts work at 3am every morning, he’d put our government to shame, they don’t know the meaning of work, Labour Party my arse, It’s a very sad time to live in Ireland. But Irish people are resilient and we will learn from this.
Just UNFOOKINBELIEVEABLE
Your health is his wealth :-)
Your ill health is his wealth mate.
Providing it costs me – as a taxpayer – nothing, then the IMO can pay this chancer whatever it wants.
Derek. Are you that naive to think that this mans pension costs you nothing? Every time you or one of your family visit a doctor, you are contributing to his pension. Wake up and take your medicine!!
Rodrigo
Only if you are a private patient. If you are GMS then the State is contributing to his pension!
And where does the state get its money?
One soulation
Civil war.
CIVOS v all honest workers.
Let it begin or we will have nothing left to take home every week.
Sean
Are you trawling or trolling?
There seems to be a lot of confusion here which as a doctor I must correct because some of the negative comments seem to be directed to doctors.
Firstly, George McNiece is NOT a doctor.
Secondly, the IMO is a private sector organisation. It is a medical union. Therefore as a private company essentially it can pay what it wants. As a doctor I find this absolutely excessive the amount of his pension but this is nothing to do with the government or public sector at all.
Thirdly, this is NOT paid for by the tax payer. Many professions and workers have unions. And just like other unions,workers choose to be members or not. Indeed if you look at doctors as a whole,union membership rates are exceedingly low compared to for example teachers, ESB, nurses etc. Many doctors are NOT members as it is not compulsory, I think some are confusing this with the Medical Council which is the licencing authority n Ireland.
Finally, as a public sector worker I think this is a good example of why the country is actually broke: because of private sector greed.
An affront to all our GPs who work so hard what did IMF sAy. The most expensive service in Europe for moderate outcomes
MB
Was always a slimy type, working for his own end and how successfully.
Ran rings around his so called overseers. Cunning! €20million, what proof.
The IMF said that the health spending in Ireland is too high and ” is now outsized relative to outcomes, which are mostly near the OECD average”.
They did not say that GPs were a poor return on investment. What do you work as? I doubt you work harder than a GP.
GUBU !
NICE
If you can get it. Ops, he just did.
As long as the taxpayer is not funding the cost of it, let the IMO pay whatever it likes. It’s up to its members to demand a reduction in the cost of their membership subscription which will have a knock-on effect on the level of wages and pension entitlements of IMO staff. The same rationale applies to trade unions.
What does it matter who pays it ? Obviously if it costs the tax payer I care ,but a pension of this magnitude is reprehensible, disgracefull, IMMORAL. Nobody is worth that much money.
@eileen I don’t agree with you. A private sector organisation can pay it’s staff whatever it wants. This is because it can afford to. If it pays too much then eventually wages will have to be cut or staff made redundant if the organisation is to survive. However, wages in the public sector should always be kept under strict review. This is because the public sector organisation is immune from market forces and the taxpayer funds the losses. This article is an unnecessary distraction from the real issue which must remain the cost of the public service.
Well said Barry.. Thankfully, IMO pay their own bills.
Barry / Graham
Please tell me you have more brains than that.
The taxpayer does pay for this. Do you think every GP in the country does not charge the state every time a medical card holder uses their service, from which some of those fee go to pay for this?
What about the non-medical card holders, who pay with their own money, are they not taxpayers, how much of the Doctors fee goes to pay for this stuff?
And who pays them?
@ Graham Thanks @ Culm the current IMO subscriptions rates accordingly to its website are below – not too expensive but a 20% cut could, for example, have the desired effect:
IMO Subscription Rates
From 1st January to 31st December 2013
Consultant Price
Single Membership €1242
Non Clinical Academics €975
Newly Appointed Consultants – Year 1 €804
Newly Appointed Consultants – Year 2 €945
Newly Appointed Consultants – Year 3 €1110
General Practitioners Price
Single Membership €1242
GP Assistant – Year 1 €723
GP Assistant – Year 2 €891
GP Assistant – Year 3 €1071
GP Locum €723
Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors
Intern & 1st Year SHO €417
2nd/3rd Year SHO/GP Trainee €540
4th/5th/6th Year SHO & 1st/2nd/3rd Year Registrar €732
4th/5th/6th Year Registrar/SpR €804
Public Health Doctors Price
Single Membership €882
Community Health Doctors Price
Single Membership €882
Dentist €882
Army €417
Community Ophthalmic Physicians €882
Overseas FREE
Students FREE
Retired Single Membership €174
The private sector can indeed pay whom ever what ever for services rendered. However I did say that if it was at the cost of the taxpayer I cared other wise who cares? BUT it is morally wrong to pay this kind of pension to anyone at any time. Just as I said above ,morality has to come into it some where.
I know we would all love lots and lots of money , including me,but when is enough ,enough?
@ Eileen it is the market who decides when ‘enough is enough’. For diverse reasons, society values the work done by some people at a far higher level (e.g. professional footballers) than the work carried out by others (e.g. traffic warden). I think the sum at issue is excessive, but I don’t begrudge him for earning it as it doesn’t come out of the taxpayers’ pocket. You can see from the above post the IMO subscription fees are not outrageous so that there is no appreciable cost being passed onto patients. Presumably the fees could be lowered which would have the desired knock-on effect on staff wages.
Thanks Barry
Indeed the same can be said of footballers and actors etc., BUT like I already said twice it is morally wrong. That is all I am saying .
Btw , they do not need to reduce fees or subscriptions , all they should do is reduce the pensions and redistribute the balance like a lottery/co op between the subscribers to improve their surgeries or clinics.
It is disgraceful tho 20,000,000e reduced by 50% Oh well !
Is it a closed shop union ?
At least he won’t have to pay full whack for membership now he’s retired.
Taxpayer pays.. union fees get tax relief I’m sure. So these fees are fairly high getting lots of tax relief for the poor doctors.
Jaysus !
THIS IS DISGUSTING..
AN INSULT TO THE IRISH .. AN ABSOLUTE INSULT TO THE PEOPLE OF THIS ISLAND
ABSOLUTLY DISGRACEFUL
NO DOUBT HE’L EMIGRATE PROBALY GO INTO GOD KNOWS WHAT..
THIS HAS TO BE ILLEGAL..
IS THIS FOR REAL? ARE they serious or are they taking the proverbial..
scandalous.. for real.. hold on while i pick my jaw up off the floor..
wheres the receipts and papers to prove this or is this pure propaganda.. wheres the statements on something this disgusting.. enjoy the bahamas doctor..
wtf.. people starving and kids going without presents etc..
are we allowed to question this.. calmly.. ?
taking the money and running.. is he joining up with the builder mates and the rest?
is this real?
obscene
??/
Jesus what a pension!
That’s trade unionists for you.
Keep paying your membership fools
no doubt they can afford their lawyers.
this is an insult to the hard working people in this country both employed and unemployed and those on disability as well..
beyond ludicrous..
this cannot be real..
who arranged this.. is this a nice deal or sweetner for the fabulous work of the HSE..
do we all crawl back into our beds now and lay down and die.. happily or be glad you know of our real good work and education system.. if this is what it produces..
hows our students and their fees.. 20milllion.. for real?
this cannot be real..
dirty shirtys
how much will enda and gilmore and burton get when theyre kicked out.. or will we all be languishing in a jail or something worse..
SHOCKING..
apologies.. 9.7 million..
sure how much would that cover for you know real needs ..
how much did he earn over his career..
three in a bed the little one said..
ROLL OVER..
The IMO is a private sector organisation. It is funded by healthcare professionals’ subscriptions. Therefore there is no cost to the taxpayer for this large payout. You can relax!
IS THIS LEGAL????????????????????????????????????
GOOD GRIEF..
I CANT TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY AT ALL.
how much does it take to live and eat three times a day.. or get the bus
or buy a pair of shoes. or books for your school child..
our education system which our young people can barely afford..
and the youth being driven out due to no jobs.. and emigrating
and theyre all jumping ship..
shock..
i love this country.. and would not even comrehend how someone could expect to think this reasonable
obviously he doesnt walk around the city.. or you know get the bus. or you know live on potatoes..
probably has the best lawyers..
how mrs robinson. and her human rights issues..
question.. is this accurate? is this true? and if so..
if he goes does he give up his passport and leg it to a nice tax free all benefits paid gig..
woah..
It’s like living the story of George Orwell’s animal farm
Ridiculous!
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