Mr. Robert Watt:

There is only a fixed amount of money available and the extension to Lansdowne Road will cost us €880 million over the next number of years. There is a limited pot and whatever money was used for other things would have to have been taken away from the general increase across the different grades. There always has to be a trade-off and a discussion about what we can do within the resources. Many anomalies that arose from decisions taken between 2008 and 2011 were addressed and in the previous agreement new scales were put in place to close much of the gap.

There are different opinions on the idea of equal pay for equal work. The Department has an assistant principal and an administrative officer on the first and second point of the scale. They are doing the same work as somebody who came in a few years earlier but that person will be on a different point on the scale. There are colleagues who are also on different pension arrangements. People who came in after 2012 are part of the single pension scheme and pension conditions and contributions are very different from those of colleagues who came in before. Equal pay for equal work is open to interpretation and there are issues around it.