A great deal has been said about benchmarking. Members of the House have heard totally misleading figures to the effect that €1.1 billion was being spent on it. The attitude was that it would have been much more beneficial if that money had been spent on X, Y and Z. When he produced the Estimates the Minister pointed out that the cost is €305 million, which is 2% of the public service pay bill. Using words such as "huge", "horrendous" and so forth is frankly ridiculous. The year 2002 was the best year for industrial peace for over 30 years so there already has been some payback. Compared with the old system of relativities, benchmarking is clearly superior.