Isle of Man - Average Earnings Up! Some Peoples Earnings Are Already In The Clouds.

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

Chief Minister Allan Bell MHK has been wittering on about how well we are all doing earnings wise. Strangely his homily on our wonderful earnings level coincides with detail supplied to me on the pay of Deemsters (IOM Judges) which reveals the following:

1st Deemster; £177,988
2nd Deemster £164,639
Deemster £132,184
High Bailiff £116,644
Deputy HB £113.342

Strangely we seem to have some of the best paid – if not THE best paid Judiciary IN THE WORLD by a long shot.

The strange world of Judges Pay is difficult to assess but you will recall I did point out that our First Deemster is on more than the pay of an Irish Supreme Court Judge (SCJ). They are the sort of folk dealing with complex cases often in the non-jury Special Criminal courts in Ireland. In 2014 (allowing for the exchange rate from Euros) an Irish SCJ got £148,808 so our First and Second Deemsters have a sizeable mark up on that.

A fairer comparison however is with the basic salaries of Judges and for Europe these are quite easy to identify.

The Council of Europe (CEPEJ) most recent table for 2012 (published 2014) lists every European Country Judge/Prosecutors basic salary. So how do our basic Deemsters with the £132.184 fair.

Well I picked some comparable small jurisdictions as follow (again converted from Euros at today’s rate):

Iceland; £55.754
Andorra: £57,200
Malta; £31,138
Luxembourg: £56,066

Anyway you get the picture here’s the link you can carry on if you want (remember salaries quoted are in Euros even the UK ones).

http://www.coe.int/…/ce…/evaluation/2014/Rapport_2014_en.pdf

So are Manx Deemsters really worth some of the highest salaries of World Judiciary?

The answer has got to be NO and the next Chief Minister if he has the stomach for it should take a leaf out of Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s book. He has slashed Irish Judges pay by 20%, if that happened here the ‘bewigged ones’ would still be on a bloody good stipend.

Let’s put it this way I don’t fancy David Doyle will be taking a job on the Albanian Court circuit any time soon - annual salary £5,800 – although he did make rather a song and dance about waltzing of down to the Channel Isles to do appeal court work.

Photo: First Deemster in CI Appeal Court garb on that salary you’d be smiling!

BERNARD MOFFATT

Issued by: The Celtic News

03/03/16

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