SOME 71 per cent of the State's 142 judges have to date paid the voluntary pension levy or made arrangements to pay it, The Irish Timeshas learned.
A total of 101 members of the judiciary have now paid the levy compared with the 72 judges who had paid it by the end of September, half the judiciary.
As the financial year still has two weeks to run, it is expected that many of the remaining 31 judges will make arrangements with the Revenue Commissioners by the end of the year, according to legal sources.
There are two vacancies on the bench out of the State’s full complement of 144 judges.
Under the voluntary arrangement, judges were asked to pay 10 per cent of their income a year.
Judges’ salaries range from €295,000 for the Chief Justice to €147,000 for a District Court judge, with High Court judges earning €243,000 a year.
Since the introduction of the pension levy, the salaries of public servants have been further reduced, with those of the highest paid being reduced by 15 per cent.
Judges were exempt from these reductions.
A spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners said yesterday that the next update of complete figures on the pension levy would be in January.
Last September, a brief statement appeared on the Revenue Commissioners’ website with the total number of judges who had paid the levy and the amount paid.
The voluntary pension levy emerged as a solution to the situation when the Government said it could not impose the pension levy, applied to all public servants, on the judiciary because of the constitutional prohibition on reducing the remuneration of judges.
The Constitution states: “The remuneration of a judge shall not be reduced during his continuance in office.”
Last May, the Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, announced that arrangements had been made with the Revenue Commissioners whereby judges could voluntarily pay a sum equivalent to the pension levy imposed on all public servants.
The voluntary contribution arrangement resulted from discussions between the Chief Justice and the chairwoman of the Revenue Commissioners, Josephine Feehily, which began shortly after the pension levy Act was passed and were concluded in April.
At the time, Mr Justice Murray said that the arrangement was both voluntary and confidential. The mechanism for paying the contribution allows for payments to be made at various intervals, including annually, and to take various forms, including cheques and standing orders.
When presenting the Budget last week, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector concluded that Article 35.5 of the Constitution prevented it from recommending a reduction in judicial pay.
Mr Lenihan added that the salaries of judges were to be frozen for the lifetime of the administration and he invited succeeding administrations to continue the pay freeze.
The Chief Justice issued a statement when the agreement with the Revenue Commissioners was made, stating that, in the light of the economic crisis, it was considered that members of the judiciary should be facilitated in making such payments.
It stressed it was “a matter for each individual judge to decide whether he or she will voluntarily make the contribution in question.”