Mr. Mark Fielding:

Senator Quinn is correct. One pays the minimum wage when starting out. One sees how employees are getting on and then if one wants to retain staff, the minimum wage is just a starting point. I also agree that we should be looking at other costs, rather than just wages. It is a definite issue. Of course upward-only rent reviews come to mind. To be fair to small and medium business owners, when things got rough in other countries, when businesses were pulling back on costs, staff were let go first. In Ireland, we held on to our staff. We reduced their hours but we held on to our staff and we did not reduce their rates. Now we are running into difficulty because as we come out of the recession, we still have the rate of pay set in 2006-07 as we bring people back into the workplace full time, working 37.5 or 40 hours a week.

It is not all doom and gloom in terms of bad employers and so on.

On the tiered minimum wage system, we already have a system where, when younger people come into the workplace, they are paid a percentage.