Would the Minister agree that the non-established grades, messengers and porters, have suffered unduly under the embargo? These grades have always been used to reduce staff while the clerical grades have maintained their quotas.

The embargo operates on the basis of filling every third post as it becomes vacant. If this were bearing more heavily on one grade than another this could only be attributed either to extraordinary coincidence or, as Deputy Mac Giolla said, to people trying to get around the embargo. We try to ensure that this does not happen. There is some justification in the Deputy's suggestion that in some areas the embargo appears to have impinged on certain grades to a greater extent than on others and that is something we are trying to rectify.