Mr. Neil McDonnell:

It is not. We are back to the point I initially made directly to the Deputy. We are dealing with young people who are entering the workforce for the first time. Parents are entrusting those young people to an employer at this time of year, in particular, as the secondary schools close. This happens every year. It is a traditional work pattern, as the full-time workers leave retail establishments such as Willow and are replaced by youth workers who frankly - we need to be adult about this, and blunt and direct about it - do not come in with the experience or the productivity of other workers. It may be their first employment.

Notwithstanding the arguments, I absolutely get the case that has been made by Mandate - you would not put a blade of grass between us - on the cost-of-accommodation issue. That is an entirely different issue. There cannot be a legitimate expectation that this can be fixed by employers. We have a problem that the tax system has driven out available rental accommodation from the Irish market over the past ten or 15 years. That is not the fault of employers and employers will not be able to fix that. If we do not reasonably recognise that employers have a job to do with youth workers, unfortunately, when the economy changes, this set of workers will not be an attractive labour cohort to small employers.