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

I am sorry Mr. Courtney but something has to prompt you not to say €100 an hour. You have to have something in your mind. I picked a deliberately exaggerated figure but something is causing you to come to the conclusion that 80 cent is reasonable. Presumably that is a balance between the demands of the workers, whose demands as very clearly articulated in the minority report are not met by that, and the demands of the employers. It appears that the employers are not coming with any evidence. It is a bit like the smoking ban. Before it was introduced, everybody said that the whole country would fall off the edge of the world into the sea and then it happened and nothing bad happened as a result of it, except that many people, me included, gave up smoking. If the evidence does not exist, and the Labour Court is not inundated, does the commission just take the employers at their word - and I am not suggesting anybody is spoofing - when they come in and say that it will finish them?