Six members of current Cabinet received severance pay

Six members of the current Cabinet received almost €270,000 in severance pay in the 1990s.

Six members of current Cabinet received severance pay

Six members of the current Cabinet received almost €270,000 in severance pay in the 1990s.

The payments were made to six Ministers - including the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny - after the Rainbow Coalition was displaced in 1997.

Deputy Kenny, Richard Bruton and Brendan Howlin received almost €62,000 each, while Eamon Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte and Joan Burton received nearly €28,000 each.

In a statement, the Government said the rules on severance pay had changed "dramatically" since the 1990s, and that the current administration has now abolished the payments entirely as well as cutting its own salaries.

Eoin O'Malley, a politics lecturer in DCU, says the payments are reflective of a different time.

"It was a different regime and probably a different time," he said.

"I think it's probably reasonable that anybody would receive some sort of severance payment when they lose their job, I think the issue here is when people are receiving severance payments when they are, in fact, continuing to hold reasonably well-paid jobs, as a TD salary is pretty well-paid."

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