Ms Maeve McElwee:

We have not engaged with members on that to any great degree. Perhaps the trade unions have a better view of whether employees would also be willing to pay into an insurable account. The challenge will always be deciding who the beneficiary is. People are paying into a fund from which they may never receive any benefit. Many employees would probably say they already look after this type of thing in their individual insurance policies. I do not know how open people would be to contributing. It would be challenging. Some organisations would be free to agree ex-gratiapackages of eight weeks with no caps where others might be confined to two. Who would actually manage, authorise or distribute it? It would be the whole industry and it would be for a very small cohort of collective agreements.