Ms Deirdre O'Higgins:

Could we deal with the first issue about wage demands and the situation of workers? The Commission's intention was that workers' rights are not impacted and their wage demands and entitlements would not be affected by the directive. In fact, it has excluded this from the final articles of the directive. We are looking at that in detail to see that that is exactly what has happened because sometimes when one looks at the wording of a piece of legislation and how it interacts with another, one can find that it can have unintended implications. It is an area that we are examining. We would be concerned for constitutional reasons about any attempt to remove the courts from the process where any decisions are being made about the rights to private property. Private property is constitutionally protected, and we would be scrutinising any proposals in that area intently. The one thing I would point out though is that the directive allows that, where there is a stay on enforcement proceedings, each member state has a right to ensure that the courts are there. From that point of view, there is at least some protection in that area. As the proposal goes forward, it is certainly an issue that we would be dealing with and scrutinising in detail.