asked the Minister for Finance whether he is aware that certain officers in the Civil Service receive salaries less by 5 per cent. than their colleagues in the same classes in the Service; that serious discontent is prevalent in the Civil Service owing to the persistence of the Minister in contriving to apply the inequitable differentiation of 5 per cent. on certain salaries? And if, in view of the admitted higher cost of living in Dublin, he will have this differentiation removed?
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. [ORAL ANSWERS.] - CIVIL SERVANTS' SALARIES.
The differentiation to which the Deputy refers was in existence before the change of Government, and cost of living, in respect of which I may remind the Deputy that we are paying a higher rate of bonus, was not the only consideration on which it proceeded.
I ask if the President would reply to the latter half of my question, which I think has escaped his notice?
No, I think it is answered.
The question was, it being admitted that the differentiation did exist, I ask whether the differentiation, for reasons that have since transpired, would be removed in the interests of justice.
There is absolutely no proof that there was differentiation in the cost of living other than the one discovered since, and that fact must have been before the minds of the British authorities when they made this particular deduction.