Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I will start with Mr. McDonnell in regard to the call for an accelerated cut in the PUP. Previous speakers have gone over the evidence, or lack thereof, of the case he is making, that ISME's members are finding it difficult to get workers as a consequence of people being on the PUP. Is the other side of that equation not an admission that some of ISME's members are paying poverty-level wages? If ISME wants to get people back to work, should businesses not be paying people a decent level of income that is more than €350 a week? Therefore, taking Mr. McDonnell's view that people act as rational agents, people would be incentivised to go to work because they are going to get an improved standard of living. Let us be honest: €350 a week does not provide people with have a high quality of life, especially if they have to pay to go to and from work and so on.