be €249,014. The incumbent, Michael D. Higgins, chooses to receive the same salary although he is entitled to a higher figure of €325,507. The president's total "emoluments and allowances" includes an additional €317,434 for expenses. The Office of the President's total budget estimate for 2017 was €3.9 million, of which €2.6 million was for pay and running costs, and the balance for the "President's Bounty" paid to centenarians on their hundredth birthday. The salary was fixed at IR£5000 from 1938 to 1973, since when it has been calculated as 10% greater than that of the Chief Justice. After the post-2008 Irish economic downturn most public-sector workers took significant pay cuts, but the Constitution prohibited a reduction in the salary of the president and the judiciary during their terms of office, in order to prevent such a reduction being used by the government to apply political pressure on them. While a 2011 Constitutional amendment allows judges' pay to be cut, it did not extend to the president, although incumbent Mary McAleese offered to take a voluntary cut in solidarity. Issues of controversy Role of the president in relation to Northern Ireland The text of the Constitution of Ireland, as originally enacted in 1937, made reference in its Articles 2 and 3 to two geopolitical entities: a thirty-two county 'national territory' (i.e., the island of Ireland), and a twenty-six county 'state' formerly known as the Irish Free State. The implication behind the title 'president of Ireland' was that the president would function as the head of all Ireland. However, this implication was challenged by the Ulster Unionists and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which was the state internationally acknowledged as having sovereignty over Northern Ireland. Articles 2 and 3 were substantially amended in consequence of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Ireland in turn challenged the proclamation in the United Kingdom of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 as '[Queen] of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. The Irish government refused to attend royal functions as a result; for example, Patrick Hillery declined on government advice to attend the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, to which he had been invited by Queen Elizabeth, just as Seán T. O'Kelly had declined on government advice to attend the 1953 Coronation Garden Party at the British Embassy in Dublin. Britain in turn insisted