Ms Geraldine Tallon:

Of the 14 business cases submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, it has responded to us on 12. We submitted two more recently. We decided in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government that because we were becoming aware of the great many allowances applied in the local government sector we would review allowances that applied locally in one or more local authorities. We decided to ask each local authority to send us a full list of the allowances applied and that we would carry out a review rather than referring all of the business cases directly to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. This seemed to be sensible and practical from our point of view to try to isolate the allowances applied nationally across the local government system and we identified 14. As I said, there were more than 200 allowances that applied in one or more local authorities and we have been looking at all of these cases. I would not say absolutely that we have bottomed out every last detail of every allowance because this has been a tight job in a relatively short period as the information has come in. We have sent the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform a further 42 business cases where we consider there is a good business rationale for the allowances and additionality such as the undertaking of arduous work and working unsocial hours.

As things stand, they are with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for consideration. We provided the committee with the list yesterday. I suspect the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has been so busy on the allowance issue generally that we have not heard anything. We await developments in this regard.