Mr. Dermot McCarthy:

Well, Deputy, the evolution of public service pay had those two elements which you cite. The social partnership rounds, if you like, and the benchmarking exercise, at least the first one. On the pay determination, the public service pay agreements were, in a sense, a function of the private sector agreement. The process of wage negotiation under social partnership was, while there was a joint employer representation of IBEC, CIF and Department of Finance and Congress on the other side, in fact, the structure of the agreements were somewhat different but the primary mover, so to speak, was the private sector agreement, which tended to be reflected more or less in identical terms but with different phasing and generally a pay pause relative to the private sector one. The actual levels of the increases were broadly shaped by inflation. It was an inflation-based bargaining process, in essence, certainly after the year 2000, when tax relief wasn't factored in as a-----