Mr. Neil McDonnell:

We have to be honest about this and say we are entrusting children to work in the workplace to employers who have to look after them and must comply with the law while doing so. They are not going to be relatively attractive from an employment point of view. It is in our longer paper that I reference a remark passed in financial services, which is very far from where we are talking about, in which there is a reference to an employment practice within financial services. In financial services, they are now refusing to recruit young workers who cannot demonstrate on their curricula vitae that they worked in a pub, restaurant, hotel or shop.

This is because they have not developed the requisite social skills for dealing with adults if they have not done so. We are not saying that those working opportunities will end for those workers but what we are saying is they will become relatively less attractive to employers who are required not to differentiate between rates of pay.

Finally, on the purchasing power parity argument, we are in complete agreement with the ESRI on that. The PPP argument is always made when one is discussing these things but what we say is one will not repair that by driving up minimum wages. One has to address the cost of living and the primary driver of that is the cost of housing. Employers will never be able to bridge that gap by forcing up wages and when the economy turns, one will see expensive labour will be the first thing that will be shed from businesses.