Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As I indicated, this agreement has just concluded. As the Deputy can imagine, the latter phases of the discussions were fairly intensive so some analysis will be done. In advance of it, we did a considerable amount of work on drilling down into the workplace on a sectoral level to ensure that unlike Croke Park I, the savings will manifest themselves in real terms in the workplace. For example, all the additional hours we will generate should this agreement be accepted have to be monetised in a way that saves either head count, overtime, premium payment or agency costs. We have run indicative views on all of that and are confident that they will amount to the sums we are talking about. Pay generally in all the budgetary arithmetic is expressed in gross terms because individuals have different tax liabilities so we talk about the pay bill in gross terms. In order to compare like with like, if we are going to talk about reductions, we will talk about them in gross terms as well.

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