Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It has become extraordinary. To disaggregate decades of side and cross-referenced deals is tortuous, as the Committee of Public Accounts is now discovering. For many public servants, pay was built up with allowances. One cannot turn around and say because one is paid through an allowance, one does not get a big chunk of pay, but if one is paid through a sectorial agreement, one does. We are working on this issue. My officials have done extraordinary work on it, for which I commend them.

Senator Aideen Hayden raised the matter of differences in pay for new entrants. People speak of two tiers in teachers? pay scales, yet there have always been different levels owing to incremental pay scales. We have taken away an allowance for having the qualification they needed in the first place. It is an anomaly that a teacher received an allowance for having a basic degree when one could not get the job without it.