In Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern, it is said that our DAL always should returns business models. But let's say if I want to get just a number from database like the last ClientID (the latest clients ID) which is a string, should my DAL method returns a ClientInfo object which has about 10 other fields as well like ClientName, Address etc.?

If I want to get a list of business objects from my DAL, is it acceptable to do it as follows or better to get a DataTable from DAL and then in the applications BLL, converts it a List?

public List<Employee>  GetNewEmployees()
{
    string selectStatement = "SELECT Employee.Emp_ID, Employee.Initials + ' ' + Employee.Surname AS Name,...";

    using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(db.GetConnectionString))
    {
        using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand(selectStatement, sqlConnection))
        {
            sqlConnection.Open();
            using (SqlDataReader dataReader = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader())
            {
                List<Employee> list = new List<Employee>();
                while (dataReader.Read())
                {
                    list.Add (
                    new EpfEtfMaster { 
                        EmployeeID = (int) dataReader ["emp_id"],
                        EmployeeName = (string) dataReader ["Name"],
                        AppointmentDate = (DateTime) dataReader["appointment_date"],                                   
                    });                            
                }
                return list;
            }
        }
    }
}