Mr. Michael Taft:

Specifically on the employers’ social insurance, for clarity’s sake, and I apologise if I did not make this clear, the Government sets tax and social insurance rates. For something as fundamental as substantially increasing employee social insurance, you would need a consensus about that. This is because it would have quite an impact. You would need to get a consensus between employers and employees, especially in the phasing in, because this could not be done overnight. It would have to be phased in over years. The employers' PRSI might go up 0.5% this year, next year, and the year after that. In each of those 0.5% stages, that would factored into the collective bargaining arrangement. This is because that 0.5% represents part of the employee’s compensation. That is the part where it is negotiated. Employers’ social insurance and employee’s compensation are part of the whole package. That would have to be taken into account in a collective bargaining arrangement. I said this before when I used the examples of company benefits, but it can be squared around between wage, benefits and all that. That is why if we had, which we unfortunately do not, a robust sectoral or national collective bargaining framework, that would make that much easier. It could be done in such a way that is the least disruptive to business and economic activity. While the Government would set it, how it would be implemented at the workplace level would be collectively bargained.