Ms Lisa McKeon:

I thank the committee for allowing me to speak today. I will take the discussion back to Deputy Bruton's questions. He asked what has changed. In my opinion, the change is that the multinationals have grown up and we have seen, as Mr. Sheridan said, that the benefit of having the EWCs is the dialogue and the open communication. We need to step back and ask what the EWC represents. It represents the employees. While central management do discuss and have open dialogue about changes that are sometimes unfortunate, it is about knowing what the employees think and allowing the dialogue.

That brings us back to why we are asking for this proposal and for the dispute resolution, as Mr. Hayes and Mr. Sheridan pointed out earlier. It is to allow us to have the open dialogue.

We have seen, through the work done in previous years, that open dialogue between the two allows for a resolution before we get to court.