Ms Oonagh Buckley:

The focus of the allowances review was on duty-based allowances, which is the intention. Some Departments, for completeness, included things such as shift allowances, on-call allowances and so forth, but they were not mainly the focus of the allowances review, which was what we call the duty-based allowances. In other words, allowances aimed at delivering a 24 hour, seven day per week working environment were not really the focus because, broadly speaking, they are closer to overtime and the like. It was primarily the allowances that dealt with whether people were being paid an allowance for a particular type of task that predates modern working environments and so forth.

To a degree, allowances are based on being on-call and working shifts. They were submitted because of the confusion of language but they were not the primary focus of this. These allowances need to be paid in environments where we must offer a 24/7 service.