Dr. Frank Walsh:

For information purposes, we primarily look at the labour market data. I understand that there are other issues, as the Deputy has outlined, that are very important for SMEs. We have some information in the current report on the breakdown across some minimum wage workers, including information on the south east and regional variations. When we did a report on the employment effects by region a couple of years ago, we did not find what we expected. My memory is that we did not find any big negative regional effects on employment from the minimum wage. These things can be difficult to measure and there are limitations on our ability to measure things with the data but we have done some work on that.