Dr. Paul Redmond:

I will address that for Deputy Shanahan, as I know he was not in the room when I addressed it previously. It is not correct to say that our minimum wage is somehow disproportionately high in European standards because the Deputy is talking about nominal terms. Realistically, we must take into account cost of living and purchasing power. When we do that and compare our minimum wage in terms of what we can call minimum wage generosity, we fall quite far down. We are the seventh highest in Europe. I reiterate that one of the reasons we are talking about sub-minimum wages is that objectively, by internationally recognised standards, they are low and we have been singled out in Europe as having sub-minimum wages that are too low. We were the only people singled out in 2023 in the European Social Charter in that regard.