Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not accept the Minister of State's point with regard to amendment No. 8, namely, that an amount equal to that paid by regularised employees would somehow negate the court case or lead to it falling. The legislation as drafted provides for an amount equal to the greater of the two options set out. All we are proposing is the addition of a third option. It is not the case that if that option is impossible to identify, there are not other options to enable a decision to be made or that this would lead to the collapse of the whole process. Surely that is not the case.

The issue of comparable wages is already provided for in legislation. The JLCs are built on the idea of comparable wages, such that this complexity is already understood and catered for in legislation. If it were the case that we could not enact legislation owing to complexities, we would have little to do here today.