Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a long time, as I recall, since we have discussed this, but at the time it is my recollection that a lot of the US companies that chose Ireland as a location were very fearful of some of the processes that were not traditional in either the US or here and that they regarded them as making it very difficult to make decisions. The US multinationals expressed a lot of concern that that was a source of great inflexibility in decision making. I would be interested to hear the witnesses' views on that. It sounds like a lot of those big multinationals from the US have changed their attitude to this. What has been the experience of companies that remained inside and those that remained outside the European works councils in managing issues, in the witnesses' experience? We know that in these sectors there can be disruptive changes that happen very quickly and that companies feel that if they do not respond, someone else will take over their marketplace very quickly. I would like to get an understanding of how that has worked in practice. I presume that if we bring in these tougher penalties and shorter timelines and easier enactment, we will see more and more companies that to date have not had works councils having to adapt to having them.