Mr. Shay Cody:

I might just give a simple example. There was a lot of media comment about a shoe allowance paid to some service officers in the Civil Service and jokey comments around it. Actually it existed for a very simple, cost-effective reason. It was only payable to those who had a uniform and it was found it was much cheaper to give people €65 to buy their own shoes rather than having a store of shoes that would be ill-fitting and would require the existence of some sort of logistics department with different shoes in it. Sometimes allowances make complete sense from the employer's point of view. Workers did not ever unilaterally - if I can call it that - impose allowances on the system. They came by way of agreement. In some cases they came by way of management initiatives, such as the example in which management decided it was a hell of a lot more cost-effective to allow workers to buy their own shoes rather than supplying them as part of the uniform, as happens in some bigger services such as the Garda and the Army. That goes back to the 1930s and, frankly, I do not think there is a better system in place. It is obviously relatively small beer - although €65 a year is a lot more money for somebody who is on a very modest salary than for somebody who is a county manager - but it makes absolute sense from the employer's point of view that it supply the uniform in the most cost-effective way it can. That is how that particular payment came about, and a lot of other allowances are there because management actually wanted to save money - rather than promoting workers, it would pay them allowances for carrying out additional duties. There are many such examples.