Dr. Laura Bambrick:

I will address quickly the timeline of the living wage. The Report on the Living Wage by the Low Pay Commission recommended no more than five years. The Tánaiste has come out and recommended in a public consultation that it will be four years. Since then, however, as the Senator has highlighted and as we mentioned in our submission, the German Government, which is not known for its spontaneous economic reaction to things, has come out to say that they would move to a living wage over a ten-month period. This will be a 25% increase in Germany's living wage. Through the labour employer economic forum process, LEEF, we are working with the Tánaiste and his officials to get more information on how Germany is doing this, how the country will support those sectors and employers that would have large numbers in the context of this instant uplift in the minimum wage to a living wage over that short period, and the implications for that. We hope to have information on that within the coming weeks.