Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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I accept the clarification from the ESRI. My concern at the end of the day relates to the small business sector and the competitiveness and viability of business. I know many people in established businesses who are on the margins and close to going under. Every time there is another edict from the Government making another change that increases the cost base again, it pushes many businesses into liquidation. Despite the Government talking about new businesses being registered and all of that, I can guarantee that if we were to look at the value of new businesses registered in the past two or three years, the amount of employment they generate and the amount of money they are making, we would be amazed at how poorly they are performing. That is just a fact of life. My sense of it is that if we are to find a way to bring this grading up to the minimum wage, it will have to be done through some mechanism, be it a further apprenticeship support from the Government or something else. It cannot fall back on the small business sector.

To get back to the substantive point, we need everybody around the table talking and we need everybody's point of view. What we need in terms of collective bargaining is to hear everybody's point of view, while understanding that there are businesses that cannot take the increasing trajectory of costs in the economy.