Mr. Denis Sheridan:

I will take up the Deputy’s point regarding expertise, the purposes of expenses and so on. Precedent within Europe has been set that all expenses incurred by the EWC are paid by the central management. There was a case at the CAC two years ago which set in place a precedent whereby the EWC could get legal expertise and central management had to pay for it. We all acknowledge the EWC does not have access to moneys. In the Irish legislation, the Deputy is correct in what he was saying earlier that management has the right to offer basic and there could then be disputes about that. However, we believe that by going through the mechanisms we have, there are enough experts, especially within the trade union movement, to alleviate the expenses. That is one of the benefits there could be to the central management of multinational companies.