SINN Féin has insisted its policy on special advisers in the Republic is consistent with the party's approach at Stormont.
The Sinn Féin manifesto for this week's Dáil elections calls for a €75,000 (£58,540) cap on salaries paid to special advisers – or 'spads'. It said the move would save half a million euro every year.
But last October Sinn Féin helped defeat legislation proposed by TUV leader Jim Allister that would have reduced the upper limit of Stormont spads' salaries from £92,000 to around £78,000.
The private members bill would also have cut the number of spads working in the joint Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister from eight to four.
When Sinn Féin declined to support Mr Allister's bill, the TUV leader accused the party of performing a U-turn because he claimed republicans had initially signalled support for the bill.
A spokesman for Sinn Féin rejected suggestions of inconsistency between its southern policy on special advisers and that in the north.
"The private members’ legislation introduced by the anti-agreement TUV leader Jim Allister was never about reducing special advisers’ salaries but was an attack on the institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement – it was on this basis that Sinn Féin voted against his Bill,” he said.
The spokesman said Sinn Féin proposed a 15 per cent pay cut for MLAs, ministers and their special advisers in the negotiations which led to the Fresh Start agreement but that other parties failed to support the move.
Last year it emerged that Sinn Féin's seven special advisers at Stormont cost £510,000. The party says it pays its spads the average industrial wage of £500 a week.
