Ms Paula Lawlor:

Obviously, we are looking to effect the provisions of the health sector pay policy which we issued on 30 September. This is a live process we are in and we are still receiving responses. What has been put forward today in the opening statement is the current position, and the Deputy will notice from that that a large majority of the organisations consider themselves compliant. However, they are paying allowances that are not in compliance with the health policy. We will be putting in place a rigorous verification process with those agencies to seek the detail behind the allowances. Some of them suggested they would have had prior approval, perhaps from the Department, that they are legacy issues or others they put in place themselves for which they did not have approval. It requires more investigation from us because as we have gone through the process, even from the time of the internal audit report, which started in 2012, other issues have cropped up.