Over night allowance civil service

While the public sector has plenty of waste in it, if a member of staff is on training then their costs should be covered.

EUR14 would cover my lunch almost the entire week!

Subsistence is the act of maintaining or supporting oneself, especially at a minimal level.

Ravima said:

I must buy my own lunch and dinner as do most private sector employees. There is no hostility, but it galls me to see the sense of entitlement in some of the Public sector employees, when we in the private sector are struggling to exist

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Are you saying that in general you have to buy your own lunch and dinner, or specifically when sent away from your normal place of work for training or meetings?

My experience of the private sector is that employers of any substantial size (hitch is the only suitable comparison to Govt departments) generally operate the same or a substantially similar system of reimbursement to the civil service rules. The fact that the OP is a civil servant is a total red herring, except insofar as it clarifies what rules & regs his employer is supposed to be operating by.

In principle, if you have a normal place of work, and your employer obliges you to be somewhere else (regardless of public or private sector), it is entirely right and proper that you are not out of pocket as a result of that obligation.

In this instance, the employer are providing B&B accommodation, but the OP isn't in the position (as he would be at home) to do his normal thing in terms of lunch & dinner, so there is an additional imposition and cost on him, and the €33.61 reflects that. I think the rules were drawn up generations ago when the typical officer would be a family man with a wife and kids at home, so the household still costs the same to run whether you're there or not - the allowance was intended to cover the incremental costs.

Any private sector employer not operating some variant on the civil service scheme, and leaving their employees out of pocket, is quite frankly stingy and exploiting their workforce, but that shouldn't mean best practice should regress to their level.

So as not to go off topic I think the point here is that the OP does not have a sense of entitlement it is really about him getting what he is actually entitled too.

As vandriver said its not clear if food is being provided, it should be as when you are away from home you have no facilities to make your own food at a fraction of the cost of eating out, also OP is not looking for extra mileage, just the return trip once so no issue there.

There are plenty of people in the private and public sector who abuse T&S, the OP certainly dos not appear to be one of these!

Ravima said:

I must buy my own lunch and dinner as do most private sector employees. There is no hostility, but it galls me to see the sense of entitlement in some of the Public sector employees, when we in the private sector are struggling to exist

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You are now deliberately misreprenting the situation.You have already conceded that a private sector employee away from home would get lunch and dinner provided.The OP has stated that neither are provided with his arranged accommodation .What sense of entitlement is there in not being out of pocket for unavoidable expenses?

In my organisation as the rules are vague and contradictory in places, I opted for full-receipted reimbursement.

To note - one method of reimbursement is allowed only per the Rules; either full-receipted or per-diem rates. In this case we see an example - the hotel is paid for (full-receipted) and the guy is getting - I think? - a per-diem for subsistence?

Setanta12 said:

EUR14 would cover my lunch almost the entire week!

Subsistence is the act of maintaining or supporting oneself, especially at a minimal level.

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In a hotel?

You don't have to eat in a hotel to survive! Slightly off-topic, one should review the subsistence rates for foreign travel - dependent on which city (not country) accommodation is required. So .. so .. low, better go 'receipted' than the city-by-city different per-diem rates.

Setanta12 said:

In my organisation as the rules are vague and contradictory in places, I opted for full-receipted reimbursement.

To note - one method of reimbursement is allowed only per the Rules; either full-receipted or per-diem rates. In this case we see an example - the hotel is paid for (full-receipted) and the guy is getting - I think? - a per-diem for subsistence?

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Not quite, the accommodation is being provided to him, booked and paid for by the employer.

Setanta12 said:

You don't have to eat in a hotel to survive! Slightly off-topic, one should review the subsistence rates for foreign travel - dependent on which city (not country) accommodation is required. So .. so .. low, better go 'receipted' than the city-by-city different per-diem rates.

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I think it would be perfectly reasonable for meals in the hotel to be covered. If he was at home he'd eat at home, not the deli down the road just cause it's €5 cheaper.

No employee should be out of pocket because he or she is travelling for their employer. If anything they should get paid extra for having to spend time away from home.