The agency in charge of the State’s debt last year spent €30,439 on a one-off hospitality event for staff to mark moving offices.
The spend on the event to mark the move of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) to new offices in Dublin’s docklands resulted in the agency’s hospitality bill for staff soaring by 55 percent from €77,098 to €119,391.
The report also shows that staff at the NTMA and at the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) last year shared bonus payouts of €2.63 million.
The 2019 annual report of the NTMA shows that NTMA staff shared bonus pay of €2.04m in 2019 while staff at NAMA shared bonus pay of €479,000 with NTMA subsidiary, Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) staff sharing pay bonuses of €103,000.
The level of pay at the NTMA emerged as an issue for staff in a recent staff survey and the annual report shows that 139 earned over €100,000 in pay last year.
Concerning the bonus pay to staff at the NTMA last year, the annual report states that the highest performance related payment made amongst the 200 staff at the NTMA to receive bonuses was €50,000 and the lowest was €1,000.
The average bonus payout was €10,339.
CEO of the NTMA, Conor O’Kelly’s pay remained static at €571,000 and he received no bonus payment last year.
Mr O’Kelly’s pay was made up of a salary of €480,000, pension contributions of €86,000 and €5,000 in annual taxable benefits.
Four other staff members received pay between €300,000 and €400,000; 15 received payments between €200,000 and €300,000 while 120 earned between €100,000 and €200,000.
The annual report discloses that the costs of interest payments on the national debt last year reduced by €761m or 13 per cent from €5.7bn to €4.97bn.
The total debt service cost last year declined €774m from €5.96bn to €5.22bn.
In his CEO report, Mr O’Kelly states: “Our average cost of debt is less than two per cent – down from almost four per cent as recently as five years ago.
"Our annual debt interest bill is heading close to €4bn in 2020 – down from more than €7.5bn five years ago.”
Key management personnel at the NTMA last year shared €3.3m in pay including bonus payments of €200,000.
Numbers employed across the NTMA and in NAMA last year decreased marginally from 787 to 778 and overall staff costs last year reduced from €101.12m to €95.6m.
The NTMA last year incurred €4.5m in professional fees that includes advisory fees of €3.5m. Legal fees totalled €549,000 while public relations and marketing costs totalled €153,000.
