Mr. Kevin Duffy:

I understand what Deputy Brassil is saying. The report deals with the totality of the difficulties that we believe exist. As I pointed out to Deputy Crowe, in the report we state that pay is not the totality of the problem. There are other difficulties which must be addressed. The report contains international comparisons on rates of pay, but I do not have enough time to get into the detail of that. Our conclusion was that even if everyone was given a significant increase in pay tomorrow morning, all of the other problems would still need to be addressed. Of course, we could not do that because our terms of reference did not allow it. A holistic approach must be adopted. There are structural difficulties which must be addressed in terms of workforce planning, providing access to data and information on where vacancies arise and trying to make the job more attractive for people who we might want to encourage to come back into the system. We have tried to set out a holistic approach to a multiplicity of issues in our report.