Ms Alice-Mary Higgins:

I will begin with the point that it would make a difference and I agree it does make a difference. We know it made a difference previously to the gender pay gap. It also makes a difference in terms of towns and communities because we know that any increase in pay for those on lower pay translates immediately into spending in local services and local goods. It has an economic knock-on effect as well as making a difference for the individual.

On the question of whether it is entrenched, it is more than entrenched, it is evolving with new mechanisms, new systems and new tricks. I refer to the zero hour contracts and the migration of that kind of insecure contract. I refer to the pushing out of those kinds of contracts in sectors such as the fast food industry which in many cases has made massively increased profits during the recession. It has not necessarily been a closing-down response, rather it is evolving. Similarly, we know that there are cases where wages are calculated on people being able to get family income supplement as well. There has been anecdotal evidence to the women's council of people who believe they have been punished for complaints by having their hours cut to the 15 hour minimum, which means they do not achieve the 19 hour minimum of work they need to work to access family income supplement. There is that gap between the current 15 hour minimum and the 19 hour minimum for family income supplement and this gap is being exploited. It is a very evolving situation and that is why we need to be ambitious in this legislation and it needs to have a really strong scope in its provisions. If the Government wants to set out strong measures pushing for a different kind of work relationship, it needs to include that capacity and to provide those tools in the legislation.

As well as considering compliance measures, something can be done to add stronger incentivising measures in areas such as public procurement, for example. The National Women's Council of Ireland is of the strong view that all public spending, public procurement, grants, enterprise grants, employer incentives, should come with social clauses and social criteria attached which include not just a minimum wage but those other issues which will be highlighted in this panoply of work. We believe that the question of the hourly rate is not sufficient in this legislation. Even if we cannot take in every issue around low pay, precarious work or vulnerable sectors, we certainly can move beyond an hourly indicator to something that looks at the question of the number of hours and what is a secure or an insecure contract and at the question of non-fixed hour contracts, for example.