Ms Oonagh Buckley:

If the Chairman will forgive me, I am surprised he is surprised that public service management in this case decided to look at a part of the public service pay bill. It was actually a budgetary announcement made by the Minister that this examination would take place. We did not consult the unions in advance of management taking the decision to look at part of the payroll because that is not the way we carry out our business. In the same way, when we decided to look at the way we pay sick leave, we did not consult staff representatives in advance as to the appropriateness of doing so. Instead, we said we would conduct our review and when the outcome of that review was complete, we would talk to them and discuss what it meant in terms of the people they represent. In effect, the allowances review, at the instruction of the Minister, was conducted in the same way. Public service management is making decisions about the way it would like to try to save money from the public service payroll. It is advancing that process and at the appropriate time, it will talk to the staff side about the implications of the decisions taken in that regard. I was a bit surprised that the Chairman expressed surprise about that. We are doing our job in terms of taking proper management decisions about the sorts of things we are doing. We are now entering into the industrial relations process, as we have discussed, which will allow for those decisions to be discussed in the proper forum. That is what we propose to do.