According to various sources staff at Irish Water could be set for a 3% bonus on top of their annual salary and their performance-related pay. This latest move will surely cause outrage as the company recently stated that their employees were entitled to a top-up payment on top of bonuses of up to 15 per cent.
Although chief of Irish Water Michael McNicholas has denied that the huge pay-outs are bonuses. Claiming that the structure is available to all staff members in the parent company
Mr McNicholas told reporters: “We have transformed Ervia to a performance based culture. “Our objective is to have a high performing organisation and to do that we have insisted as part of the review of our pay model that everyone who works in our company is accountable for their performance and has to be prepared to take an element of pay at risk. “You are not going to convert an element of someone’s basic pay into a bonus because it is not a bonus.”
It is thought that proposed top-up payments will be subject to workers meeting strict pre-arranged targets in a given year. It is also given if its staff member’s business unit hit their targets. The proposed new pay-outs would mean a member of staff who was already entitled to a 10 per cent bonus could receive a final bonus payment of 12.1 per cent, if the company and their business unit meet their key key targets.
However Mr McNicholas went onto state that no bonuses have been paid since the company was formed and there is no intention giving out bonuses this year. Although it has been reported that a spokesperson for Irish Water told RTE This Week that annual bonus payments could be increased in “exceptional circumstances”.
The unidentified spokesperson said that the pay model “does provide for such multipliers”.
The spokesperson went on the record saying: “However, performance-related awards are capped at 15 per cent within Irish Water and at 19 per cent in the rest of the group. In the event, no performance-related awards at all have been paid in Irish Water. “Best practice pay models link the performance of an individual, business unit and company to ensure staff focus not just on their own performance but that of their business unit and the company as a whole. “The Board has discretion to allow for multipliers above one, in cases of exceptional company or business unit performance but in practice this happens rarely in companies where this pay model applies and has never happened within Ervia.”