Performance-related pay is "fundamentally and intrinsically wrong", says Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the INTO. His editorial in the union's magazine, states: "Attempting to assess individual public servants on the basis of their outputs alone is misguided and counter-productive resulting in masses of paperwork and additional administration with no improvement in the service being provided."

"If there is any proposal to move down that particular road we will be opposing it." But, he says, the debate on performance-related pay is continuing because there is a lot more to it than merely payment by results. "Not only that," he writes, "but there are many obvious opportunities arising from it. Performance-related pay focuses on issues like up-skilling, extra workload, additional qualifications, new responsibility, taking on new challenges and many more."

There is the need to create opportunities for staffs to be able to earn more from doing what they are qualified to do, he says. There are all sorts of difficulties attaching to it, he says, "but we need not be frightened, just careful".