John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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No. A person, who is not knowledgeable about the processes in the Department of Education and Skills as to how these allowances were born, casting a cold eye on the different allowances introduced would come to a conclusion very quickly that, historically speaking, the Department of Education was a soft touch when dealing with the unions, one of which is probably the biggest union in the State. Many of the allowances are quite obscure. One could be dealing with an allowance for a particular VEC or an allowance for a meteorological reading. Many of the Departments did not behave like that. They did not create an allowance, they dealt with matters in terms of core pay. The way the Department has dealt with this historically has been completely different from that of many other Departments. What the Department has ended up with is a pretty complicated piecemeal system that is archaic but Mr. Ó Foghlú would probably not agree with me on that.