Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 406: To ask the Minister for Defence the bonus or merit payments awarded to senior officials and staff each year since 2000, detailing the management and staff category; the purpose and the amount of the award and the highest award made and to whom. [28397/05]

Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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Civil Service posts at the levels of assistant secretary and deputy secretary are covered by a scheme of performance-related awards. The operation of the scheme is overseen by the committee for performance awards. The funding of awards is based on 10% of the payroll for the posts covered by the scheme. Within this overall limit, payments of up to 20% can be made to individuals. Prior to the introduction of the revised scheme in 2002, the previous scheme for assistant secretaries was based on 4% of the payroll for the posts of assistant secretaries.

Details of the procedures, the numbers covered by the scheme, the range of awards and the total amounts paid in Departments are outlined in the annual reports of the committee, which are available on the Department of Finance website, www.finance.gov.ie. The committee does not identify the amount paid to individuals as this is regarded as personal information. The total amounts awarded to assistant secretaries in my Department each year since 2000 are outlined in the following table:

Performance awards for other grades are made to individual staff members and to groups of staff by way of recognition for exceptional performance of duty. In assessing eligibility for awards, regard is given to the nature and quality of the activities involved and to the circumstances under which they were carried out. Attention is also paid to the grade level of the staff members concerned and to what would be regarded as high quality performance from staff in such grades. The total amounts awarded to staff in my Department each year since 2000 are shown in the following table. An amount of €2,500 was the highest single award made to date. This was awarded to a higher executive officer in respect of exceptional performance in relation to the introduction of the management information framework project in 2004.