Mr. Pat Burke:

I will deal first with the question on parent-teacher meetings. Teachers are not paid anything extra in respect of such meetings. There was an agreement, which preceded that concluded at Croke Park, under which teachers were required to make themselves available for a number of these meetings on an after-hours basis. As part of the Croke Park agreement, we negotiated with the teachers' unions an additional quantum of hours - some 33 per annum - which can be utilised at the discretion of schools, in an after-school space, to get teachers to meet parents and so on. Previously, schools might have been closed to facilitate parent-teacher or planning meetings. The need to close schools for these meetings to take place should have diminished greatly. The type of closures to which I refer should be much less a feature of the system because the quantum of hours negotiated as part of the Croke Park agreement is used for that purpose.

The eventual outcome of the benchmarking review was to allow the allowance structure to stand. I do not believe there was any massive focus on whether allowances should be integrated into pay. Clearly, this could be done in respect of some of these allowances. As stated, however, I believe the outcome was to allow them to stand.