Mr. Michael Donnellan:

We have an overpayment figure of €504,000. That is a cumulative rolling figure. Overpayments arise for a range of reasons. The main reason relates to late notification to the payroll. These cases can relate to paternity leave, maternity leave or sick leave. We run the payroll on Tuesday to be paid for the following Thursday week. That will be corrected within the following pay cycle. Approximately 18% of our overpayments are natural overpayments that are corrected in the next cycle.

The next group arise from our errors in respect of the effective communication between the prisons, our payroll section and the Paymaster General in respect of paying salaries.

The main point on overpayments is that we recoup all overpayments.