Top 20 lump sums for civil servants last year cost a combined €4.67 million

Ken Foxe

The top 20 lump sums for civil servants last year cost a combined €4.67 million.

The Department of Public Expenditure figures detail just how significant a burden the pension bill for highly paid civil servants is proving for the taxpayer.

Pensions for those 20 individuals will cost €1.5 million every year, although normal tax rates apply to these payments.

For lump sums, anything up to €200,000 is tax-free while anything between €200,000 and €500,000 is taxed at only the standard rate of 20 per cent according to Revenue rules.

For 2023, the 20 highest lump sum payments were together worth €4.86 million. They also created a pension liability of €1.66 million into the future, according to the data released.

In 2022, the top 20 payments cost €4.6 million with an indefinite annual pension bill costing the taxpayer €1.56 million per year.

The Department of Public Expenditure said: “The information available is available for civil servant officers only as we do not have access to public servant details.”

Asked about the scale of the payments, a spokesman said they had no comment to make.

Five civil servants have retired with lump sum payments worth over €300,000 over the past three years.

The colossal payments were made to officials with long service in the public sector to go along with an entitlement to a six-figure annual pension.

Details from the Department of Public Expenditure show how one person last year received a lump sum of €358,490.

Their annual pension was calculated at €120,692, according to data released under Freedom of Information laws.

Another retiring civil servant got a golden handshake of €311,698 and is eligible for a per-year pension worth €114,340.

In 2023, two long-serving staff each received lump sums of €313,600. Both are entitled to an annual pension of €115,710, the department data showed.

There was also a single lump sum payment of €306,315 in 2022 which is payable alongside a yearly pension entitlement of €110,965.

In the period between 2020 and 2024, nine different people retired with per-annum pensions that were worth in excess of €100,000.

At least 89 former civil servants received lump sums worth between €200,000 and €300,000 during those five years.