Mr. Fergus Whelan:

I will answer the second question first. It is even bigger than that. The industrial relations aspect comes from a far more fundamental thing in law, that is, legitimate expectation. There is a thinking in law whereby if an employee pays for something on the basis that he has been told this is what he will get, then he has a legitimate expectation. This proposition tears up legitimate expectation in a most unfair way. If anyone had the wherewithal to bring a Supreme Court challenge or a challenge to the institutions in Europe, I believe this could not but fly in the face of legitimate expectation.

The other question was whether we had done a cost-benefit analysis. We have not. I believe that initially only a rather small number of people would be affected by it. However, the fewer the number of people affected by this, the greater the injustice. If I and five others are the only people to have lost €24,000 as a result, it is a greater injustice than if 50,000 people were affected. In other words, it is worse if a small number of people have been targeted. It would have the effect that a small number of people have lost out but no one else would lose out. That is a graver injustice and a bigger inequity.