Mr. Ian Talbot:

On the training levy, when the initial consultation came out from the Department of Education and Skills with the proposal of increasing it by 0.3%, in our submission on that we certainly raised our concerns about that increase. However, we said at the time that it was really important that we had transparency on where the training moneys are being spent and that we need to rebalance the money Mr. McDonnell referred to, that is, the money that the then Minister, Mary Coughlan, took from funding that was going into training people in employment and put it into the very necessary training for people in unemployment.

With unemployment down to 6.1% or whatever, and expected to continue to decline, we need to rebalance the amount that is being spent on the unemployed and to spend more money on training for people in employment in small business and, going back to the point Ms Buckley made, giving businesses the opportunity to obtain the skills to scale up. If we do not train people better, they are not going to be able to scale up. When it was announced in the budget that the levy was going to be increased by 0.1% over three years, we made the point that if we need money to be spent on infrastructure, for example, it has to come from somewhere. However, we reiterated the point that we need to know how that money is being spent and the transparency around it. Our focus is on rebalancing the money we are spending on training and making sure that we give businesses the opportunity to scale up.

On the minimum wage, the point I made in my report was more about the process followed this year than a comment on the increase itself. This year, somewhat out of the blue, the Minister made an announcement that the Low Pay Commission had reported and that he was increasing the minimum wage. Even when the press release came out, the link to the report itself did not go active for a couple of hours. The increase was announced even before the report was produced. What we suggested was that we would rather see a process whereby the report could come out and that there would be some opportunity for debate or setting expectations around it. The reason we are here, and I think we all have the same objective, is that we really want to see a situation where the fruits of economic recovery and employment growth need to be seen in improved standards of living and not being just soaked up by escalating costs, whether they are within Government control or otherwise. We need to see people seeing increases that they can spend as disposal income rather than just, of necessity, paying bills, whether rent or whatever it might be.