Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

We could go into that as well. On the Deputy's question about head 26, although this is a matter for the Labour Court, I hope we would never be in a position where employers claimed inability to pay the minimum wage. If it were the case, under previous national agreements we had the old inability to pay clause.

In those cases, where we had that arrangement, an independent assessor was appointed by the court or by the Commission to evaluate the company's performance, look at its accounts and come back to the court with a report stating whether what is being claimed is true or one could vary it in terms of paying at that stage what were the national pay rounds in that case. We have much experience over the years of using independent assessors to assess the capacity of a company to pay a pay claim. That has fallen into disuse over the last few years but the precedent is there and there used to be ten or 12 individual practitioners who did this independently for us. There is a limitation of about 24 months - no less than three months and no more than 24 months - and one cannot get the exemption twice in any five-year period, so one would be hard pressed to look for that in the context of even the period available to one. That is the way it would be adjudicated, I anticipate, by the court, which would appoint an independent assessor who would look at the company's books and report back to it.