Mr. Robert Watt:

As the Deputy knows, Haddington Road was a long time ago and I am trying to think back to the agreement but there are many different elements to it. There was an increase in hours worked, changes in overtime rates, premium payments and cuts in pay for those earning over €65,000 so for a large number of the Haddington Road measures we have a very clear sight of the savings. They were provisions which enabled us to deliver more services or make savings, hours worked being an example. There were 15 million extra hours delivered in the system. There is a cash value on that but that enabled us to sustain services as we continued to cut, and those additional hours were very valuable. We can come back to the Deputy with our assessment of the savings. We are very happy that, in the main, the Haddington Road agreement delivered. We are very happy that at a particular time when we needed to make savings, and it was difficult to make savings on the budgets during that period - we had a long way to go in terms of cutting the deficit when we negotiated it - that agreement was the right thing to do for the Government and it delivered broadly in terms of where we are now.

We are in the process of unwinding and the Government has entered a new agreement with the unions which, over time, will unwind the provisions of FEMPI legislation but it will take a number of years to get back to where we were. The cuts in pay have been significant and the pay savings are significant, so it is not possible for the Government to unwind it over a three year period. It will take much longer than that given the extent of the savings and the cuts that were endured.