Mr. John Horgan:

There have been reorganisations in various areas where some jobs have been eliminated and we have been able to redeploy people in other areas. People have been told that their job is disappearing. For example, in financial shared services, we have had a huge investment in IT, which means that a lot of jobs are no longer necessary. The people there have been told this. Some have decided to leave the company, others have been re-employed in other jobs and some people have taken jobs at lower salaries - that is true. We cannot give a guarantee that once a person has a particular job, they will maintain it forever, nor can we say that if we have another job that warrants a lower rate of pay, we will give an employee the higher rate of pay just because he or she happens to have it. We cannot incur that kind of cost.

Everybody's job is being priced at the market rate for the job. It is true that in certain areas in Bord na Móna, salaries were above the market rate. We are moving as swiftly as we can, by agreement, towards a situation where everyone is paid the market rate for the job rather than above it. In some instances, of course, that means there are increases but in quite a number of instances in certain areas of the company, we are paying above the market rate and in the current environment, we cannot continue to do that.