PAT RABBITTE, the communications minister, has appointed his former constituency organiser and programme manager to a state board — a position that pays €7,695 a year.

Noel Ward, the deputy general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, was appointed to the board of Ordnance Survey Ireland on December 21 by Rabbitte, despite not having applied for the role following a public advertisement by the department.

Ward, a former primary school teacher from Tallaght, is a long-time supporter of Rabbitte, and ran his constituency organisation in the 1990s. Rabbitte hired him as his programme manager in 1995 when he was a junior minister at the Department of Enterprise and Employment. He was paid a salary of IR£38,000 (€48,000).

Ward lost his job in 1997 but