Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I do not want to sound as if I am giving lessons. The public service embargo was applied to everyone without exception. As the Senator knows, because of the austerity measures over the past year the first decision the Minister made was that all individual departures from the embargo had to be by way of individual application to him directly. It is not the case that some sectors were shielded while others were not. It was suggested in a newspaper some days ago that, since the beginning of the embargo, the Minister for Finance has signed in the order of 2,600 applications, or has agreed to some thousands of applications.