Dr. Laura Bambrick:

In the first instance, is it the pay packets of minimum wage workers that is causing this tsunami, or expected tsunami, of closures? Absolutely not. If one's business model is premised on paying below-poverty wages, then there is something wrong with the business model. It is not pushing that. As Deputy Bruton mentioned, there is a withdrawal of Covid-19 supports, so we are seeing a delay in closures. Many businesses have been kept on life support over the last two and a half years because of what were correctly very generous Government supports to keep vulnerable but viable businesses in place. In doing that, we kept vulnerable non-viable businesses in place. It is difficult to separate out how many of those businesses are failing because of the last recent crisis and the ongoing crisis. However, this is certainly not about paying an extra 80 cent or more to 160,000 workers of a working population of 2.5 million.