Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

We do not operate the payroll for the VEC sector, for which there are 33 individual payrolls. As everyone is aware, the VECs are being rationalised and amalgamated and we will have 16 education and training boards, which probably will be established before the summer. At present, with their 33 systems, obviously it is their responsibility to make payments. Given that the VEC centrally is the central employer there, they would be more likely to have been able to use their own teachers for substitution allocations and consequently the nature of their substitution payments would not have given rise to the same difficulties and the issues for new entrants would not have arisen with the same difficulties. We have been consulting the Irish Vocational Education Association, IVEA, regarding the VECs and we understand that some VECs have got over any initial difficulties, while we are waiting to hear from other VECs. However, there is not the same scale of an issue with the VECs as there is with us. In addition, to give an idea of the scale of the VECs, VEC pay constitutes a further 56% when added on to the pay within our second level sector. It is just about one third of the sector in terms of overall pay.