Mr. Darragh O'Connor:

I will say a quick couple of words and Ms Reynolds might want to come in as well. Our ambition, along with those of a lot of other organisations in this sector, is that people have people who have degree qualifications should get degree-levels of pay. Mercer, the consultancy firm, did a benchmarking exercise a couple of years ago and set out what those pay scales should look like. That is our ambition and is where we want to get to. The JLC process is a legal process that has to be endorsed through the Oireachtas. Hopefully, it will be up and running in the next couple of weeks. One of the things that we have been waiting for is to know how much money is in the pot in the budget. We also have been waiting to know about the new funding model and the JLC is integrated into both of those. This can happen relatively quickly and certainly next year. In the short term, we would hope that people will be above the living wage. However, that is all dependent on the amount of money that goes into the sector. Providers can only pay the money that they have. It is up to the State, which is a key player, although it is not the employer. It funds the vast majority of the sector at the moment. If it wants to help retain staff, drive equality and drive professionalisation, that will cost money. It all depends on how much money the State is willing to put into the sector to make that happen. Ms Reynolds may wish to come in on that as well.