Nationalist MP to donate salary raise for medical research

Nationalist MP Jean-Pierre Farrugia has broken ranks with the majority of MPs who will pocket a substantial increase in their honoraria, by announcing he will donate the salary raise to the Stefano Borgonovo Foundation for research on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a condition which his wife suffers from.

Farrugia, who is also championing the regulation of in vitro fertilization, said he will kick-start the fund for fiscal incentives to parents who adopt frozen embryos. Farrugia was the president of the Select Committee for medically assisted procreation.

“As a family doctor in some of the least advantaged communities on our island, I will do my utmost to remain accessible to those in need, both Maltese and immigrants,” Farrugia said.

Farrugia had already voiced his opposition to the raise in comments to The Times and Bondiplus. He said MPs were officially informed last Friday that their honorarium was to rise from 50% of the Scale 1 salary in the civil service, to 70%, bringing it up from €19,000 to €26,000 and also being backdated to May 2008, when Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi increased all Cabinet ministers’ salaries by adding the increased MPs’ honorarium. Arrears will follow later on in the year.

Farrugia said that despite the particular circumstances of his family, he did not feel comfortable taking a substantial, unexpected raise when the country could not afford to give a €1 raise in the supplementary allowance to the most needy couples in the country - something which he had complained about in the Budget debate.

According to a reply to a PQ by Speaker Michael Frendo, parliamentarians are entitled to a €19,092 honorarium – 50% of the Scale 1 salary of €38,184.

But finance minister Tonio Fenech revealed in parliament that ministers have pocketed an MP’s honorarium of €26,728 since 2008, above their €42,003 salary.

The €26,728 represents 70% of the Scale 1 salary, which according to Fenech is backdated from May 2008 and is yet to be paid to MPs who instead were pocketing 50% of the Scale 1 salary.

Ministers also receive an additional 20% of their basic salary, amounting to €8,400 and a €1,500 postal allowance, bringing their total salary to €78,630. The Opposition leader is paid €38,184 as well as various allowances totalling over €10,000 a year.

MaltaToday first reported ministers had been given a handsome salary increase back in December 2008. A spokesman for the prime minister had defended the decision, justifying the ministers’ role as members of parliament as a separate job.

During an interview with Maltatoday in August 2009, Farrugia had voiced concerns about how the global recession has exposed growing social inequalities, and that this is the wake-up call for the Nationalist Party to rediscover its Christian-democratic roots.

Farrugia spoke of fears that his party is losing its ideological bearings: namely, by clinging to moral conservatism and pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.

That was – and still is - a bold description of the state of the PN, once the preserve of centrist democrats inspired by their Italian counterparts; now seemingly veering towards a dangerous, centre-right territory. At the time, Farrugia maintained that it was time for the PN to stop and think of its identity, after so many years in government.

“Unfortunately this soul searching isn’t going on,” he said, adding this exercise had even been made more urgent by the global economic downturn “because it is in moments like these that the people can really judge the party’s social credentials.”