Dr. Frank Walsh:

It is worth saying that when we recommended introducing the living wage, we commissioned a detailed report by the group from Maynooth, including the late Professor Donal O'Neill, who will be greatly missed by the academic community. The basic view that came out from that review is that we should proceed to 60% of the median wage and perhaps, based on evidence, we can even go further than that but it has to be evidence-based. The nature of the research is not so much that we know for sure that we can increase the minimum wage to any level and know exactly where the level is that is not going to damage employment. I do not think it is black and white. It is more that there is good reason to think we can increase the minimum wage without damaging employment, but we have to continuously do it, as we committed to do in our recommendations based on the living wage. We need to increase the minimum wage to the 60%, then review it and see if there is a case, based on the international evidence, for increasing it more. I do not think it is black and white or that we can say for sure. Some firms could be affected in a negative way and other firms could have increases in employment. If we are concerned about the overall level of employment, there is a reasonable case for trying to identify the most vulnerable firms - maybe the firms with the biggest share of minimum wage workers - and targeting the supports at those. That is certainly what we recommended.