Inside Politics:The Taoiseach appears genuinely perplexed by the scale of the negative reaction to his generous pay rise. At one level this indicates that his legendary political touch has begun to desert him in his third and apparently final term.
At a deeper level, though, Bertie Ahern's bewilderment reflects just how far removed the entire ruling elite of politicians, civil servants and State functionaries have become from the reality of life as experienced by most people in Ireland today.
A lot of attention has been focused on the fact that Ahern is the highest paid political leader in the developed world. What has not been addressed is that our top public officials are also probably the best paid anywhere and, when their extraordinary pensions are taken into account, they are undoubtedly the best off in the world.
Irish politicians have moved to the top of the world rankings in pay because their salaries and perks are linked to those of the public service.
The two groups have a vested interest in maintaining a system that in the long run threatens to drag the State back into the bad old days of financial improvidence on a grand scale.
A submission by the Department of Finance to the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service, which sanctioned the recent massive awards, spelled out the actual cost of the astonishing pay packages we give to our senior civil servants.
The submission calculated that a pensionable public service salary of €186,000 was equivalent to a non- pensionable salary of €500,000 a year.
"This example illustrates one characteristic of at least some of the groups covered by the review - the expected pension payments associated with an appointment may well be greater than the total pay," said the Department of Finance submission.
In spite of this, the review group recommended an increase in the salaries of secretaries general to €303,000 a year, just a little less than the Taoiseach's.
It means that their pay is equivalent to a job worth about €800,000 in the private sector in which they would have to make their own pension arrangements. This applies pro rata to all public service pensions.
The real issue is that it is not just those at the very top of the public service who head the comparative top of the world league table for pay. All Irish public sector workers are paid more than their international peers, according to recent figures, and that doesn't even take account of the fact that they have the best pensions in the world.
Data collected by the EU body, Eurostat, shows that the average public sector worker in Ireland earned €46,000 in 2004, compared to €36,000 for those in the private sector.
This is an exact reversal of the pay differential in most other EU countries where private sector workers earn more to reflect their lack of job security.
The figures also show that Irish public servants are better paid than their counterparts in all other EU countries where the average earnings are €11,000 a year less. An average teacher's salary in Ireland in 2004 came out at €48,000 in the figures, a substantial 35 per cent ahead of those in Britain and 25 per cent higher than those in Germany.
Nurses, other health service personnel and social workers earned an average of €46,000, double similar earnings in Finland and 30 per cent higher than in Britain.
There is a strong argument for paying key public service personnel, such as teachers, nurses and gardaí, good salaries to attract the best people into the jobs. The problem that arises, though, is how those salaries and pensions can continue to be funded during an economic downturn when others are losing their jobs, suffering effective pay cuts and losing their already meagre pension entitlements.
There has been some comment in the letters pages of this newspaper in recent days about the stance adopted by Éamon de Valera to politicians' pay when he was campaigning for office in 1932.
During that election campaign, he proclaimed that no man was worth more than £1,000 a year, a clear attack on the incumbent, WT Cosgrave, whose salary was £2,5000, and on senior civil servants who were earning more than £1,000 a year.
When he won the election, De Valera proceeded to tackle the issue but like most aspects of his career, there is some confusion about what he actually did. He announced a voluntary pay cut for himself and his ministers saying that he would accept £1,500 a year. In fact this was his after tax salary so the comparable gross payment was £1,700 a year.
While he didn't quite live up to his implied pledge of cutting his salary to £1,000 a year, de Valera did accept a pay cut of 30 per cent and required a pro rata rate cut from his ministers and top civil servants. That gave him the moral authority to ask others to tighten their belts during the difficult times that followed in the economic war of the 1930s.
The problem today is that by looking after themselves so generously, our leaders have forfeited the right to lecture others about the need for pay restraint, no matter how much such restraint is required in the more difficult economic days ahead.
If the benchmarking body has the courage to face reality and tell the mass of public servants that they are not entitled to further awards under its auspices, the pill will be difficult to swallow.
On the crucial long-term issue of pensions, where will our political leaders find the authority to spell out the facts and tell all public servants that, at a minimum, they will have to pay far more to fund them than they do at present.
In the search for a just pension system for all, politicians should be asking whether the country can afford to pay all retired public servants half a salary* for the rest of their lives when the bulk of the country's pensioners are expected to survive on a third of the average industrial wage, but there is little chance of that happening.
The loss of moral authority to govern in difficult times may ultimately prove a far more serious consequence of the pay debacle than any temporary political embarrassment the Taoiseach and his Ministers may have suffered.
* Public servants usually receive a lump sum of 1½ times annual income on retirement. The pension is half of the salary of the person doing their old job and increases in line with all pay increases, including national pay rounds, benchmarking and special pay increases.