Ms Patricia Callan:

Even by the end of this year, if everything goes right and all the small businesses survive and all the multinational investment comes through, we will still have an unemployment rate of 9% and 180,000 fewer people at work. That means we are looking at locking even more people out of the labour market. When we look to the live register, it is interesting to note that employers are already experiencing skills shortages. We are still seeking to recruit people with skills from abroad because of the mismatch. We have low-skilled workers on our live register and young people with no experience. If it does not make sense to hire a worker on that basis, a business will not do so if its costs are too high. That is a basic metric of which we need to be aware.

With regard to national competitiveness, we have one of the best minimum wage rates in the world. Ours is the fifth highest in Europe. The rate in Luxembourg is an outlier, and the rates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are the same as ours. When account is taken of the purchasing power argument in this debate, we drop only by one percentage point. We would go further in arguing this point and say that this cannot be looked at in isolation. In many other countries, people on lower rates of pay are taxed much more than people here and they have access to much better public services. We need to look in the round at the taxation and income policy element in term of public services as well as the national minimum wage.