Ms Laverne McGuinness:

I am not running around it. There are circumstances in which a business case needs to be put forward to set out why a particular individual may need to be paid a certain amount in order to attract somebody to a particular post. In some cases we are having difficulty in recruiting to various posts. That is my opinion; that is not public pay policy. As a public servant, I have to implement public pay policy.

The Deputy is correct in his observations about governance. All of this came to light as a result of Enron, as the Deputy will know from his Google search. It is not unique to the health sector, or other sectors. Pay is being examined because of the austerity facing several organisations and because of the Enron crash. When the crisis happened, the question was asked why the people in question were being paid so much.