Mr. Robert Watt:

I agree with the Deputy about the legacy. Within the Department we are trying to deal with a variety of legacy issues across the public service in this and other areas. There must be a sense of realism in that even with the burning platform of our current fiscal deficit, there is the issue of the system's capacity to address these within a timeframe. I share the Deputy's views about allowances, and the way this has been portrayed has not been very good for the public service, with much misinformation in the public domain. We must move on to modernise the structures, ensuring that pay reflects higher duties.

With regard to the business cases, perhaps that was not the best way to describe many of the submissions, although some are better than others. We welcome the views of the Deputy and the committee in that regard. We initiated this process, which had never been done before, and colleagues deserve credit for providing enormous amounts of information and getting to the bottom of an element of the pay bill which was very unclear. People did not previously have good sight on this but that has been remedied. The Minister and colleagues should be commended on starting the review, although there has not been much credit because of how it worked out. I accept the point about the business cases.

From the 1,100 allowances, I suspect that after a certain period we will have a good deal fewer. The best way to view this may be through the value of the allowances. The main elements that formulate the largest part of the pay bill will be in some way incorporated into pay and there will be clearer pay scales and structures. We wish for the qualifications and principal allowance for teachers, or the rent allowance for gardaí, for example, which make up the largest portion of the pay bill, to be subsumed - as the Minister noted - into a sensible pay structure. I imagine there will be fewer allowances and people will not have as much fun as we have had going through them all.