CIE bosses still on bumper pay despite €36m bailout

Cookie_Monster

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/cie-bosses-still-on-bumper-pay-despite-36m-bailout-29090514.html

A few choice quotes:

There are 88 senior staff in the financially troubled state transport company, CIE, in receipt of salaries in excess of €100,000, new documents obtained by the Sunday Independent reveal.

The documents reveal that in total there are 46 people in Irish Rail being paid more than €100,000, while there are 20 in CIE head office enjoying six-figure salaries.

PAC chairman John McGuinness said ...
"Then you increase the fares instead of saying there will be no fare increases until you get your house in order," Mr McGuinness said.
"I just can't fathom why you can't do that to put a stop to the carry-on that is going on in CIE. A company in the private sector would be bust if they did that."

88 seems a very large number considering the overall size of the company(ies), especially the 46 in IE. I guess we've finally some confirmation of what most people on here believe, a bloated jobs for the boys club that still seems to be answerable to no one...

As a company what does CIE do these days? The NTA does the planning, the individual companies seems to totally control their own destiny, the website doesn't really give much info either.

Markcheese

Is anyone surprised ? CIE could have been let go bust , and iarnrod eireann, bus-eirann, and Dublin bus rescued... And restructured

corktina

88! thats damning...

Hungerford

How come is the media convinced that the £36m bailout took place? It didn't - Varadkar froze the money before CIE could get its hands on it.

Markcheese

Hungerford wrote: »

How come is the media convinced that the £36m bailout took place? It didn't - Varadkar froze the money before CIE could get its hands on it.

So they never needed it ? It was supposed to be an emergency bailout to stop them going bust? If they never got it,
they prob never needed it ..

foggy_lad

Ah god love the poor feckers on €100000+ that 36million was probably their Christmas bonuses!

mickydoomsux

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Every large company in the world has a tiny number of useless overpaid chaff sitting at the top.

foggy_lad

mickydoomsux wrote: »

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Every large company in the world has a tiny number of useless overpaid chaff sitting at the top.

Why do irish rail and cie have so many when compared to bus eireann and dublin bus though?

schemingbohemia

Engineers probably in the case of the former and people who managed to miss out on the biggest property boom in the history of the State and hold onto property that should have sold in the case of the latter.

dowlingm

I'd like to know how many of the IE people were rolling stock/operations side and how many infrastructure/signalling side. I know I bang on about it but operations is going to continue to be crucified until its costs can be separated from the right-of-way millstone.

That said, the 100,000 figure... yes it's a lot of money but it's one the media like to use because it's a round number. Here in Ontario the "sunshine list" (another media phrase) records salaries of public servants north of $100K (EUR74.6K), but it isn't indexed to inflation so inevitably more people end up on it in every succeeding year leading to more media handwringing. According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator the sunshine list should be nearer $140K to catch the same people as when the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996 passed.

The question I'd ask is: how much would said employee get at another European transportation concern of similar size in a country of similar size, somewhere like Portugal, Austria, Denmark etc. This is a question the equivalent to which the political masters of CIE regularly fail.

Terrontress

dowlingm wrote: »

I'd like to know how many of the IE people were rolling stock/operations side and how many infrastructure/signalling side. I know I bang on about it but operations is going to continue to be crucified until its costs can be separated from the right-of-way millstone.

That said, the 100,000 figure... yes it's a lot of money but it's one the media like to use because it's a round number. Here in Ontario the "sunshine list" (another media phrase) records salaries of public servants north of $100K (EUR74.6K), but it isn't indexed to inflation so inevitably more people end up on it in every succeeding year leading to more media handwringing. According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator the sunshine list should be nearer $140K to catch the same people as when the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996 passed.

The question I'd ask is: how much would said employee get at another European transportation concern of similar size in a country of similar size, somewhere like Portugal, Austria, Denmark etc. This is a question the equivalent to which the political masters of CIE regularly fail.

Are there many Western European countries with as small a railway system as Ireland to allow a direct comparison?

It's a very simple network with infrequent movements, a lack of freight, no competition.

How much are the Translink guys on?

dowlingm

Problem is that if you run a network as a mainline, no matter how long or short, you need someone with a minimum level of qualifications and experience to be in particular posts. If you want someone to run IE's signalling operation on say 40 grand a year, you won't get an applicant the Railway Safety Commission won't have a serious problem with. DB doesn't care what the guy who runs Dublin's traffic lights make - not their problem.

Terrontress

dowlingm wrote: »

Problem is that if you run a network as a mainline, no matter how long or short, you need someone with a minimum level of qualifications and experience to be in particular posts. If you want someone to run IE's signalling operation on say 40 grand a year, you won't get an applicant the Railway Safety Commission won't have a serious problem with. DB doesn't care what the guy who runs Dublin's traffic lights make - not their problem.

Maybe having a smaller network brings additional challenges as there aren't the layers of management beneath and more responsibility lies on the shoulders of the top dog.

I think Translink might be a good comparison. Both semi-state, both own trains and infrastructure, both have limited networks.

Are there many Translink officials making more than £85k p/a?

dowlingm

Don't get me wrong, Translink is probably a good comparator as long as purchasing power parity is taken into account.

Hungerford

Terrontress wrote: »

Are there many Translink officials making more than £85k p/a?

There are six senior executives in the Translink on £100k p/a. It's chief executive Catherine Mason is on £200k p/a, which practically everyone but her agrees is unacceptably high.

Apart from them, I think that everyone else is on less than £85k p/a.

Stonewolf

I rarely leap to the defense of public pay but 100k is a low number to be giving out about.

How many people work in the organisation as a whole?
What jobs do these 88 people do and what are their qualifications?

Senior engineers and particularly people who have to make safety critical decisions on a large scale generally command high salaries, usually for good reasons.

LXFlyer

I imagine that in CIE alone, you have a group finance function and given CIE self-insure there would be a reasonably large legal department which would by necessity employ solicitors.

I'm guessing that the rest across the group are CEOs, CFOs, senior managers and engineers.

Hungerford

Stonewolf wrote: »

How many people work in the organisation as a whole?

10,398 as of the 2011 annual report.

dregin

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/cie-bosses-still-on-bumper-pay-despite-36m-bailout-29090514.html

Interesting to see that the thumb twiddlers are still sitting in pretty little nests despite their complete ineffectiveness.

foggy_lad

dregin wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/cie-bosses-still-on-bumper-pay-despite-36m-bailout-29090514.html

Interesting to see that the thumb twiddlers are still sitting in pretty little nests despite their complete ineffectiveness.

Even more amazing if people here are to be believed when they say that the bailout money was not paid out.

LXFlyer

There was no bailout paid. This canard needs to be set aside once and for all.

The government made a commitment to support CIE Group if needed in order to satisfy the requirements of the auditors' report to the financial statements, basically if the group were unable to source additional external funding if needed.

In the event the additional funds were not required. End of story.

LXFlyer

People seem to think that senior professional staff such as engineers, senior accountants, legal staff etc. do get paid modest salaries in similar private sector companies. The fact is that they do not.

Expecting a CEO in an organisation the size of any of the three CIE operating companies to be earning less than circa €175k is living in cloud cuckoo land. It ain't gonna happen. You are not going to get suitable staff to do the job. Similarly the CFO and chief engineers I would expect would be on something around €150k - that is the market rate.

Cookie_Monster

lxflyer wrote: »

Expecting a CEO in an organisation the size of any of the three CIE operating companies to be earning less than circa €175k is living in cloud cuckoo land. It ain't gonna happen. You are not going to get suitable staff to do the job. Similarly the CFO and chief engineers I would expect would be on something around €150k - that is the market rate.

Well I'd expect only 1 CEO, not 4 for a start. (whole other kettle of fish though)

I'd also not expect 88 staff in IE to be on such rates, you can certainly justify a fair number of high level admin and engineering rolls but there is just no way an organisation as small as IE can have that number of people on very big money.

LXFlyer

Eh the 88 was across the entire group!

Cookie_Monster

lxflyer wrote: »

Eh the 88 was across the entire group!

sorry the 46 it was in IE alone.

davidlacey

What was the carry on according to the article about a third party trying to illegally scrap IE commercial wagons from dundalk yard? obviously around the old barrack street stub? I thought IE had no keg wagins left as this form of rail freight was dead and buried and seeing as it is why would IE bother to get gardai to investigate?

Victor

Last 8 posts dragged over from http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056906216

Moderator