Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is why I spent the majority of my time trying to tease out matters. If we were to assume that a principal's allowance is not really an allowance, which is the point made by Mr. Burke and which I accept, and we stripped that out from our analysis, we would see a situation where the vast majority of the allowances, given that the degree allowance will change, will be received by people who are not at the top of the teaching apex. They are not principals, assistant principals and so on. They are either in the classroom or doing additional duties within third-level colleges. It is not just a question of perception. One concern I would have is that where there is a kango or dirty money allowance, it could create the feeling that if I do something else, I am entitled to an allowance for it, for example, if I wielded another kind of hammer. I do not want to feed into the cliché of this debate. I am just using it as an example to make the point.

I could make it about the boiler allowance or another allowance. My point is that if one gets an allowance for doing one thing, one should also get an allowance for doing something else.