Ms Patricia King:

Just as the Deputy has given his history of this, I know of a number of people who have been successful in small businesses for a very long time. I am related to some of them. They know very well that paying a decent wage and offering good conditions is the manner in which they will retain their employees and that they will get a much better return for the company as well. That is tried and trusted.

It is now accepted by all of the major bodies that that is a fact of life. I do not think it would be an easy job to reconcile our position in regard to this, which is that decent work includes a decent rate of pay. People cannot live on the minimum wage. It is about €2.20 per hour below the living wage.

Terms and conditions of employment are a matter between workers and employers in the first instance. Therefore, the obligation on employers to provide sick pay for their employees is a term and condition of employment. Somebody in business has that judgment to make about affordability and having proper wages and conditions. Those are very serious considerations that an employer has to make when he or she undertakes to employ people. The very strongly advocated view from the employer side for years has been that they pay wages but other social matters such as pensions and sick pay are not a matter for them, they are a matter for the State.

Mr. McDonnell asked earlier what the Social Insurance Fund is for. I can tell him that one of the primary uses of money from the Social Insurance Fund is the provision of a State pension. Some 70% of the fund is used to provide a State pension to people because they have no other access to a pension and would be in total poverty if there was not a proper State pension in this country. Those are some of the pieces that also come from the Social Insurance Fund. I do not know why Mr. McDonnell is questioning what the Social Insurance Fund is for. It is going to be in deficit. There is not any doubt about that. That is the reason we welcome the very good debate that we hope will happen. I agree with Mr. McDonnell that we will have an adult debate about how sick pay should be funded, but we are fundamental in our view that it is an obligation of the employer to pay sick pay to an employee.