Mr. Philip Carroll:

I do not think I necessarily raised concerns about them. The reality is that we do not have an indication at present as to what that Bill might look like or its structure. I wish to emphasise that while we have sick pay schemes in individual companies, it is a matter for those individual commercial companies to decide whether they may make any adjustments to the current arrangements now, in advance of a Bill. My principal point is that we need to understand the parameters of the Bill. We have talked here about margins in our sector and affordability. We need to understand how that Bill is designed, what its scope will be, what the potential costs associated with that will be and how those costs are to be shared.

I mentioned that in the context of looking at the commission of taxation on social welfare, which is something that is planned. Rather, I mean that a commission on taxation is planned. We need to do it in the context of that. This is not to suggest that the legislation should be delayed in any way because these things can happen in parallel, but we need to have that understanding of what the cost-sharing would be and what the burden of such a sick pay scheme would be in terms of the capability of sectors to pay for that scheme.