Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Absolutely. It is sensitive because we have to carry out an exercise to establish exactly the level of pay reduction imposed by employers on individual staff in individual section 39 bodies. We have an instruction from the Department to begin that process and will begin it. Our estimate was based on high-level assumptions. For example, it was assumed that all section 39 staff had access at the time to consolidated salary scales, that they had all been cut by the same amount on the same date - something which would not necessarily have happened - and that they would all be restored by the same amount on the same date. None of that will necessarily be the case and the data gathering exercise mentioned in the opening statement will determine the facts in that regard. The figure is significant and a number in the tens of millions of euro. I am not sure of the relevance of the exact figure as there is a process to be gone through.