Ms Esther Lynch:

There was a comment as well I think. In response to Deputy Calleary, not all small employers are bad employers. In fact, quite a lot of the exploitative practices about which I have been talking are not those of small employers at all but are practices of big business making big profits, which makes it all the more objectionable. For those businesses that cannot afford the national minimum wage, provisions are in place that allow the employer to go along in private to the Labour Court.

It is not a publicised discussion, the accounts are not made public and such employers can tell the Labour Court they cannot afford to pay the national minimum wage for a period. The Labour Court can then set out a lower rate of pay. However, the legislation quite rightly limits the amount of time for that and the implicit question is, why would the legislation limit the amount of time? Quite simply, it is that there must be fair competition. One cannot have a situation in which one business is trying to pay the national minimum wage and to provide good, just and fair conditions of employment and is competing with somebody who has an ability to pay less. Consequently, the legislation says one can do this for a year. To be honest, if one cannot afford to pay the national level wage to oneself and all one's employees for a period longer than a year, one's business is struggling and needs more help than just the national minimum wage. While a lot more should be done to help small businesses that are in trouble, I do not think it should be a subsidy from the employees' wages. I think the Government should be helping small businesses more. It is not a case of suggesting it is the employees' wages that should be helping because then one really is asking workers to subsidise their own employment and there is a point at which that becomes unfair, both in terms of competition and to the workers themselves.