Mr. John O'Brien:

I think it was probably our level upwards where the awards have not been paid.

The other grades are covered by general pay awards, benchmarking, and that kind of thing. The review body on public sector pay, which has been agreed since 1969, dealt with grades at that level across the public service, the Judiciary, the local authorities, fire services, together with public officials such as Ministers and taoisigh, and so on. That is basically the position.

On the point about Mr. Watt's letter, Mr. Watt wrote to Mr. Hourigan on 22 April 2021 and basically said that Mr. Hourigan was entitled to request a review of this decision on the expiry of FEMPI legislation. Mr. Hourigan followed up on that once the FEMPI legislation was unwound on 1 July, and has received no response to that correspondence.

It seems to have been delegated to one of the people in the HR department of the Department of Health, who has told us, basically, to go to the WRC, after we have been through the Labour Court process.