{"id":125524,"date":"2025-11-06T19:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/125524\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T19:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:44:07","slug":"uisce-eireann-employee-receives-e32500-performance-related-award-on-top-of-salary-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/125524\/","title":{"rendered":"Uisce \u00c9ireann employee receives \u20ac32,500 performance-related award on top of salary \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

One employee at Uisce \u00c9ireann<\/a> received \u20ac32,500 in performance-related awards last year on top of a salary of more than \u20ac100,000. <\/p>\n

The D\u00e1il Public Accounts Committee<\/a> was told on Thursday that about 400 personnel, or more than 20 per cent of staff at the national water utility, earned more than \u20ac100,000.<\/p>\n

Uisce \u00c9ireann said 93 per cent of its 2,108 staff last year were eligible to receive performance-related awards.<\/p>\n

Just over \u20ac13 million was paid out last year in performance-related payments. The organisation said it operated a market-based, benchmarked pay model.<\/p>\n

Public Accounts Committee chairman John Brady<\/a> of Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> described the \u20ac32,500 performance-related payment figure as \u201cextraordinary\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0IFI welcomes conviction against Uisce \u00c9ireann for sewage pollution of Cavan riverOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Uisce \u00c9ireann chief executive Niall Gleeson, who does not qualify for any bonus payment under the terms of his contract, disagreed. He said Uisce \u00c9ireann benchmarked its staff against lots of other companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to retain staff. We have lost staff to the private sector. People need to be rewarded, and we reward them based on the pay scale that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the organisation includes scientists, engineers and very senior management.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will lose staff if I do not retain this pay structure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Gleeson said that, under the terms of the bonus scheme, staff members are set individual targets and received a rating based on their achievements. However, he said if the company does not perform well during the year, the bonus amount is reduced.<\/p>\n

Mr Brady said the maths suggested only about 50 people in the organisation did not receive a bonus last year.<\/p>\n

Uisce \u00c9ireann chief financial officer Chris McCarthy said the lowest performance payment last year was \u20ac77.<\/p>\n

He told Cathy Bennett of Sinn F\u00e9in that staff moving to the utility from local authorities would not receive annual incremental pay rises, which are common across the public service. Instead, he said, Uisce \u00c9ireann operates a market-based pay model with two components: a base salary, and \u201cpay-at-risk\u201d arrangements that provide incentives to work harder and deliver objectives.<\/p>\n

Mr McCarthy said a similar pay model is in operation at other commercial State companies such as the ESB and Gas Networks Ireland.<\/p>\n

The utility\u2019s representatives told James Geoghegan<\/a> of Fine Gael<\/a> that it provided capacity for developers to connect about 41,000 housing units to water and waste water services last year. <\/p>\n

They said Uisce \u00c9ireann did not make connections to individual houses or apartments, as this is a matter for developers. They said it facilitated water connections for up to 41,169 units but do not have figures for the number of properties actually connected to water services. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One employee at Uisce \u00c9ireann received \u20ac32,500 in performance-related awards last year on top of a salary of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,8650,47679,43,12467,776],"class_list":{"0":"post-125524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-james-geoghegan","11":"tag-john-brady","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-public-accounts-committee","14":"tag-uisce-eireann"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}