Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is fair enough but it is important nonetheless. The commission has to take a balanced approach and I fully accept that. All the available information has to be looked at but by virtue of the fact that there is a negligible number that actually front up and go to the court - a minuscule number of them - they are almost irrelevant. It is a tiny number compared to the number of companies that say that the cost of pay will send them to the wall.

I am coming back to the 80 cent, I cannot bend my head around that. It strikes me that there is a lot more tolerance for a higher increase given that there is no evidence to suggest that there is not. If this was not the case, the modest increases, which now amount effectively to a pay cut for low-income workers, a raft of cases into the Labour Court would be expected. That does not happen. The court is not inundated. Will Mr. Light accept that there might be a higher tolerance for a wage increase? I accept that his approach has to be cautious and balanced but I suggest that it has been a little over-cautious. There does not seem to be any evidence to support these amounts. We are calling them a pay-cut as that is effectively what they are in real terms; even if that was not the intention, that is how it will work out in pounds, shillings and pence for low-income workers.