Mr. Ger Gibbons:

A number of steps had to be taken in respect of the directive. The first was that it was to be transposed into Irish legislation by 15 November 2024. The Government adopted one piece of legislation relating to the Low Pay Commission. It is our view that an awful lot more still needs to be done.

The second part is that under the directive, the Government is supposed to prepare an action plan to promote collective bargaining by the end of 2025. We understand that is being done at the moment. It is expected by the end of 2025.

There is a complication in that there is a case before the European courts at the moment about the directive. We have heard that there will be a ruling some time in the next few months. What will happen then is that, depending on how that goes and we are hopeful that the directive will be upheld, the European Commission will look at the legislation by which each member state has transposed the directive. As I said, it is our view that there are many aspects of the directive that Ireland has not transposed. We will be engaging closely with the European Commission and the Government on that in the coming months.

I will pick up the points that Dr. McDonnell and Mr. Nugent made on the question about skills. The directive is about minimum wages and promotes collective bargaining in order to ensure that minimum wages are adequate. There was also a recognition when it was being adopted that collective bargaining does an awful lot more than just set adequate minimum wages. The OECD did an interesting piece of work a number of years ago on collective bargaining in OECD countries. One of the things it found was that workers who were covered by a collective agreement were one third more likely to engage in upskilling and retraining at work than those who are not. Countries with much higher levels of in-work training, upskilling and apprenticeships are all the countries with strong systems of social dialogue and collective bargaining. The reason we are continually pushing this piece of legislation is that we think it can do what it is supposed to do but can also do an awful lot more to address the issues that are set out in our documents.