Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. I could have listened to that for another couple of hours if we had time.

I will stick to the retail angle first. I will play devil's advocate. On the comment about how the minimum wage is calculated and how it has a knock-on effect on the living wage, the reality is that in Dublin, for example, all the software companies are coming in with Google Pay and a lot of software localisation people are employed. I have mentioned in this committee before that 85% to 90% of the workers who bought the houses in one new housing estate in the Clonburris strategic development zone are from overseas. They are welcome. They are making a contribution, paying taxes and so forth. However, in terms of policy, it is pushing up prices of affordable housing and means a garda or nurse cannot get onto the property ladder. What is a living wage? It is what allows people to live.

How many employees in the witnesses' sector are the lead breadwinners in their families? In the North - this is anecdotal from the past - people worked in forecourts and because the social welfare was £50 and the cost of living was lower, a person who worked in the corner shop could be a family breadwinner. In Ireland, I suspect that is not the case. We have a lot more students, people working part time and retired people. Is that how the witnesses want it or do they want to be able to pay people a wage to enable them to work in retail as a long-term career? It is a chicken and egg situation and a cart and horse cliché.

I was taken by Ms McBride's suggestion about having a regional minimum wage. We have different regional bodies. In the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs we have had presentations. Let us twist that a little. I would be interested in this on the insurance side as well. How would that relate to something like a Dublin allowance, which I have been calling for for nurses, gardaí, teachers and so on? Maybe we need to have a general Dublin allowance because of the high cost of living in Dublin until we sort out the longer term issues that contribute to inflation. We have no control over some of them. We are on the periphery. Historically, we have planned the country badly so we do not have proper population density for footfall to make it more viable for retailers in a small area. I would interested in the witnesses' comments on that.

On the insurance side, we already heard the contribution on legal costs being brought down and trying to have more done through the Injuries Resolution Board. My next question is left of centre. The GAA used to do bouncy castles, big slides and so on and then they were suddenly gone. There was a case in an unnamed GAA club where a child went down one of these slides, broke her ankle and got a €70,000 payout. That is scandalous. Is reform of how we quantify injuries needed ? Many of the members of Alliance for Insurance Reform, for example, are adventure-type premises, many of which have closed because of the cost of insurance. Have we gone mad, not only with the fees for the legal profession but also with what constitutes reasonable compensation for an injury? If children go on a bouncy castle, they might bang their heads together. That is not negligence, it is just children playing. If something sharp is sticking out of the bouncy castle and cuts the child, it is the responsibility of the provider. Is there any mechanism whereby we could look more closely at what constitutes damage versus normal day-to-day risk? We are not talking much about the personal responsibility side. I will give an example. A hockey ball was rolled to my daughter in school. She tripped over it and broke her ankle. We did not think about using any public liability insurance. We just went to the accident and emergency department and got it sorted out. It was an accident. Maybe we need a bit of common sense as well to push the costs down, which would also affect retailers. I apologise for taking up the witnesses' time. Do they have any inputs?