Ms Frances Spillane:

We did a comprehensive trawl of our files for Ms Smith when she was carrying out the internal audit and what we found was that very careful consideration was given to any requests for special allowances and that a small number of allowances were approved from time to time. Other allowances were not approved. I have worked in the Department since 1980 and I would have to say that was never the culture. All civil servants would be very conscious of compliance with Government pay policy. It is up to whatever organisations concerned to substantiate those claims.