Ms Maeve McElwee:

It is very difficult to give Deputy O'Reilly a direct answer on this, unfortunately. What is very important is that employers comply with the legislation that applies to them and operate in the structures and procedures agreed in their organisations.

With regard to public procurement, one of the issues in today's discussion is that we are somewhat jumping ahead in terms of the issue we are here to discuss, which is whether legislation is needed to transpose the directive. Our view, as we have already said, is that we do not need to initiate any more legislation to transpose the directive. This does not preclude us from continuing engagement at social partnership level on what the framework for promoting collective bargaining might be. I am somewhat-----