Mr. Pat Burke:

There were 88 allowances and we accept there is not a case for them to be renewed. There is a range of examples, including the Gaeltacht and island allowances. There may have been circumstances when they first came into being and in our judgment they no longer obtain. With a range of other allowances they were deemed effectively to be part of core pay. To define core pay, we took a general view that if an allowance is generic - paid to everybody within a grade - it is much more likely to be categorised as part of core pay. If an allowance is paid to a subset of people for particular duties and so on, it would not be as clearly part of core pay. The business cases were divided into those which should legitimately be retained and those which should not be retained in future. The exercise now under way relates to the second category, for which there was not a case prospectively, and we are now commencing a process of seeking to negotiate their removal from current beneficiaries.