Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The point I am trying to make is that many of the conversations we are having here regarding low pay are largely around the private sector and commercial enterprise. Within that, we have many different sectors. The broad-brush approach to pay that I hear unions talk about does not apply. A company that was topical a couple of years ago was Debenhams, where a significant number of people were employed by a multinational on low-paid contract hours. I do not think anybody could think that what happened there was just treatment of workers.

However, that policy cannot be applied to small businesses, especially rural and regional employers. I will give a simple metric. If one employs four low-paid workers, in which one can include oneself as a promoter, one's annual wage bill, including employer cost, will be close to €100,000. If one is working off a 20% revenue model, which many businesses are, that means one needs to turn over €500,000 to cover those costs. I challenge many people at the meeting to develop a business, employ four people and see how successful they will be in developing €500,000 in annual sales.

Many businesses are struggling. They are having a difficult time in the current business environment and wages are just one of the significant cost burdens that they bear. I can tell Mr. Courtney, as someone who has run businesses, that many will not bother to go to the Labour Court to cite inability to pay. They will reduce their working time and the number of operators they have and they will change their systems of how they do their business to try to reduce the employment component within that. That is a significant problem in the economy.

As Mr. Courtney has made reference to, having a low skill set is a problem in getting a decent wage because, ultimately, it feeds into how much people are worth. Having said that, the economy has been doing quite well up until now and most workers are getting a reasonable wage. The budget yesterday was certainly favourable to the lower paid and the public service has to support low-paid working in terms of healthcare, medical card access, employment subsidies and family income supplement because small businesses cannot carry that. I am inundated at present with small business owners who are in serious trouble because of inflation in the economy. I hear people here talking about employers being very hard on employees in what they pay. Some members on this committee are not living in the real world.

Mr. Courtney said the terms of reference of the Low Pay Commission are fairly narrow. Will he tell me how many employer groups on the commission deal with the SME sector?