Mr. Neil McDonnell:

I will raise a couple of things. First, the ESRI study from January 2022 analysed the effect of a 10% movement in the minimum wage over three years. That did have a negative hours effect in those certain sectors we are talking about. I appreciate we are talking about the minimum wage rather than the sub-minimum rates, as opposed to 12.4% in one quarter, which is what happened this year. We must not forget that in the round, we are at full employment now, or very close to it. In the current environment, we are not going to see a large unemployment effect because the market is taking any available labour. The issue is that at the point at which the economy turns, youth labour will become progressively less attractive to employers. As we are talking in particular about 16 and 17-year-olds, we have to be honest about this, we are talking about employers who are effectively acting in loco parentis for the summer.