Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputy O'Reilly for allowing me to go first. I have a meeting to go to afterwards so I apologise if I have to leave straight away.

It is great to see Mr. Courtney again. If I may, I want to start by taking up an issue that arose the last time he appeared before the committee. I will quote from the transcript of the meeting where he said to me: "Some actually say to us that they do not want to be put in a situation where if one increases their wages or their living wage to a certain amount, that it costs them hours or their job." I then said: "Mr. Courtney is saying that he has had submissions from workers asking not to get a pay increase." and he answered "Yes".

That then sponsored some work on our side. I am indebted to Ms Pyke because we did a freedom of information, FOI, request on the issue and she forwarded all the submissions the commission had received. It was very clear from the submissions that the commission had not received submissions from workers on the minimum wage asking not to have their wages increased. The committee wrote to the commission and the commission then wrote back saying they got the requests through informal channels when meeting workers. I was intrigued by that. Could Mr. Courtney please tell us more about who these workers were who were demanding not to get a wage increase and when he met them?