Mr. Barry O'Brien:

Again, as I said previously, being a HR practitioner for many years I am aware of the custom and practice. Everyone in the health family was clear on what was deemed an allowance by those of us who were engaged in the process of both negotiating the awarding of them and those in receipt of them. I accept the ICTU was before the committee last week but if one were to ask someone from a health background what they deem to be an allowance they would have said there is a separate rate for overtime, Sundays and bank holidays. All I am saying is that is the language of the health sector, which in 2007 had 110,000 employees. Everybody in the sector would say there is a rate for it and we are probably exceptional in the sense that the reason my file is so big is that it is full of Labour Court recommendations. In the history of industrial relations in the health sector management has contested the concession of any claims to anybody. The vast majority of the allowances are on the back of Labour Court recommendations. Ultimately, for us, the Labour Court is the court of last resort in the IR arena. I do not even have the liberty to suggest to the committee that such a payment should be an allowance. Immediately, the union side would say that I could not call it an allowance. It is clearly written in the Labour Court recommendations that “the rate to be attracted for this shall be”.