Dr. Tom McDonnell:

In recent years, we have seen the creation of a fiscal council and a Low Pay Commission. They both work on different models. One is a secretariat model with researchers and the other is more about competing social partners combined with academics. I see this as requiring a role for civil servants and academics, but also bodies that are advocates so that they are at the table and their voices are heard as well. There would need to be a secretariat who would be able to do this type of research. The type of information needed from the CSO ultimately would be consumption patterns for different household types to understand what they need to spend on and from that, it could be determined what an advocacy benchmark would be. As Mr. McGeady said, the living wage technical group performed that type of function already but this could be a more formalised semi-government body like the Low Pay Commission or something like that. It would report the adequacy threshold for various groups and report that to the Government to say that it needs to be a certain percentage of the medium or the average wage, whichever it might be.

Obviously, elected representatives make the ultimate decision based on whether they agree. That is how the Low Pay Commission works. The Government is not obliged to accept the view of the Low Pay Commission and it is certainly not obliged to accept the view of the fiscal council, which it does not, usually. That is how we see it. Such a body could be set up quite quickly. Maybe the results would not be ready in time for budget 2025 but it certainly would be feasible for budget 2026.