Mr. Tony O'Brien:

If the public pay policy applied on a compulsory basis in the section 39 agencies, that would require us to take a view on job size and where it would sit in a public sector pay scale. While those agencies are asked to have due regard, they are not strictly speaking obliged to do that. It is important to stress that if we applied full public sector norms, in many instances it is likely that we would find that the range of benefits available to staff in section 39 organisations are below those that would apply if they were in section 38 or public agencies. There was some discussion earlier about defined benefit pension schemes. Such schemes would be absolutely standard for the vast majority of staff in section 38 organisations, and would be more exceptional in current day terms for section 39 organisations. We do not see like-for-like benefits, so doing exact comparisons is not really practicable. Equally, it is not in the public interest, or in the interest of the HSE as the funding body, to seek to drive section 39 organisations into being equivalent to section 38 organisations, because that would inevitably reduce the flexibility of that service provision and increase the cost of it in an overall sense.

We are focusing specifically on disclosure of pay at the higher levels of the entities with which we have contracts, which are these two subsidiaries in this instance, as opposed to Rehab Group as a whole.