Mr. Shay Cody:

That is probably where the debate started. The Deputy will recall that in the past there was quite considerable agitation, originally among the spouses of soldiers before soldiers were allowed to have their own association. It was a campaign about low pay so the workers and their associations subsequently argued for resolution of the low pay issue. There was always a fear on the management side - not in the Department of Defence but in the Department of Finance and probably, today, in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform - that if one did something for the Army, that might have implications elsewhere. That is how the device of allowances emerged in many cases. When representing soldiers who had an offer of some improvement in their conditions by way of an allowance, people were told that hell would freeze over before a formal pay increase would be given to them, so they ended up making a pragmatic judgment, particularly in circumstances in which there was no firestorm of media abuse about allowances.

We now find allowances routinely described as perks, bonuses and benefits, whereas Deputy Harris is 100% correct in stating that they were simply a way of building up something by way of a remuneration package that in private sector companies is usually made up of salary plus bonus plus, possibly, share options. The public service came up with its own myriad of different inputs because of a fear of knock-on consequences. This was not an issue until somebody started describing these arrangements as unearned bonuses and, frankly, abusing them, which is not fair or reasonable.