Mr. Michael Howard:

On the first point in regard to the naming of allowances, we are all agreed that it is an issue that needs to be addressed going forward. I can only repeat what I said earlier, namely, while at the time the allowances were introduced great thought and attention was given to the conditions in terms of who would be entitled to them and so on, naming them was never an issue. Those of us who work within a particular community such as a defence organisation may often, when talking to each other, lose sight of how a person with no prior information in this regard would arrive at a particular view. I accept that point.

Regarding the repercussive effects, respectfully, I must disagree with the Deputy. The point I am making is an observation of experience. While I agree with the Deputy on the fact that the unique attributes of military life are self-evident, in my experience, one would be surprised at the ingenuity, perhaps legitimately, of trade union and representative associations in terms of monitoring what members of each get and then seeking to use that as a lever to get more for their respective members. It is a response to something that was actually happening in terms of leap frogging. Some groups within the public service were believed to have succeeded in catapulting their pay up the system by watching what other people got and then being creative in terms of presenting a case for why they should get it. The fear and concern was based on events that occurred, although some time back. We are in a vastly different place now.

During the 1990s and the noughties, when centralised pay determination mechanisms and agreements such as benchmarking 1 and 2 existed - I must emphasise at this point that this is national pay policy and I am only responsible for what goes on in the defence domain - links were established between the Defence Forces and particular key marker grades within the public and Civil Service so that that when the latter obtained increases others elsewhere also got them. To break that link, there was a need to identify the military service element and make it unique.