Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Given that the company that manufactures it is taking the Government to court it does not make it easy to resolve that issue.

I do not know everything about allowances paid to Ministers of State attending Cabinet because some of it happened before I was Taoiseach and the matter has largely been dealt with by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The position is that only two Ministers of State serving at Cabinet can be paid this allowance. A view was taken previously that it would be possible to pay a separate Chief Whip's allowance in the same way that party Whips receive allowances, including Fianna Fáil's party Whip. The former Chief Whip, Deputy Regina Doherty, was paid on that basis. It subsequently transpired that was not lawful and the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, has agreed to pay back the overpayment that occurred. It is important to say that she was in no way responsible for that. It was an overpayment, not something that she claimed, and she bears no responsibility for it whatsoever. Two people will continue to be paid the allowance and were already in receipt of it. They are the Ministers of State, Deputies Finian McGrath and Paul Kehoe. I did not ask them to give it up so it never arose that they would have to because they were in receipt of it. The other two, the Ministers of State, Deputies Mary Mitchell O'Connor and Joe McHugh, were not in receipt of the allowance and so will not be able to receive it unless this House changes the law.

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