Ms Oonagh Buckley:

I might intercede; otherwise, I sit here as an adornment. Perhaps it is worth clarifying what the FEMPI recoupment legislation permits and does not permit. First, FEMPI stands for "financial emergency measures in the public interest". The FEMPI legislation contains an anti-avoidance provision to prevent, once the pay cuts of 2010 and the most recent pay cuts of 2013 were implemented, employers from restoring the reduced pay rates in various ways. There are measures included in the legislation which contain very strong provisions to the effect that if an employer, in an effort to avoid the FEMPI measures, seeks to increase the pay rate that has been reduced, that money is held in trust by the employee and must be returned by him or her. Ultimately, if that process does not work the State can withhold some of the grant money that is paid to that individual public service body. It is, however, specific to the pay cuts made under the FEMPI legislation; it is not specific to other overpayments of wages. There is a general rule around overpayment of wages and recoupment of overpayments, whether made in error or whatever, and those are the normal rules that must apply. It is not a practical proposition to try to apply the FEMPI legislation, which is specific to its purpose of an anti-avoidance measure, in this case. There is a general rule around the recoupment of salary overpayments that applies. Under the Payment of Wages Acts, overpayments of salaries can be recouped in the normal course. There is no public service pay legislation or anything of that nature that provides similar provisions to the FEMPI legislation specifically. The measures provided for in the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (No. 2) Act 2009 as carried through in subsequent legislation are very specific to dealing with preventing avoidance of those measures. It was probably a slight misunderstanding within the internal audit report that suggested that it might be possible to use those measures to deal with the overpayments.