The government has insisted that the salaries of cabinet members have only increased through cost of living adjustments since 2013, while allowances have gone down.

Over the past days it has been claimed that Parliamentary Secretaries were now earning as much as their previous PN counterparts did between 2008 and 2010, when they also received a parliamentary honorarium.

In a statement, the government said that politicians’ salaries had not increased since 2013. In fact, the salary of a PS remains 105% of salary scale 1. The only increases were attributed to cost of living adjustments and a new collective agreement for the Public Sector.

All declarations of assets tabled since 2008 and other records for the past ten years confirm this, the government said.

“In March 2008, a nationalist administration had increased cabinet salaries behind peoples’ backs. For this reason, in 2009 and 2010, ministers and parliamentary secretaries had declared income of more than €80,000. Declarations for subsequent years show a decrease because the government of the time had first reduced, and then removed these increases.”

In 2013, the Labour government kept salaries in line with pre-2008 levels, the government said. Allowances given to members of cabinet were also reduced.

Compared to the 2008-2010 period (when cabinet members also received their parliamentary honorarium), today’s declarations show that cabinet members earn €22,000 less.

The government said it is untrue that PSs today earn as much as they did under nationalist administrations, when they also received an honorarium.

It said the claims that salaries had been increased were made by those who had compared salaries for half of 2017 to an entire year in 2018.