Ms Patricia Callan:

Even if I give someone a permanent contract with full-time hours today, I am no more likely to be able to guarantee that next month than somebody who is building up the hours towards the maximum, because this is just the reality. In the old days we had people in full-time contracts and then we invoked lay-off and short-time measures to reduce their hours when we did not have the work.

An analysis of the welfare bill will probably show that there are people who have been on short time for about five years and there is no cut-off ever. There are all sorts of other issues within the system in terms of looking at it from the other angle. The labour market will move because people are only needed for a certain number of hours and they only want to work a certain number of hours.