Mary White (Fianna Fail)

It is possible to hold meetings with 50 or 60 people. They could be held in boardrooms in the case of small companies. Regarding the question of larger companies and the pyramid model described by Senator McDowell, there are master's degrees in human relations and personnel courses that people pursue in larger companies to learn to engage directly and appropriately with employees. No company, other than the few rogue companies, is self-destructive. Companies wish to engage with their staff in the most direct and transparent way possible and clear up any misunderstandings.

Senator McDowell makes direct involvement out to be more of a problem that it is. This is probably the fifth time I have spoken about a visit I made to the US for four months in 1980 to examine how multinationals ran themselves. I wrote back to the National Building Agency, where I worked at the time, that there was more socialism in US multinationals than we dreamt about in Ireland because the US companies did not take a "them and us" approach. Unfortunately, the management style in many indigenous companies in the past was based on the British style of management, which, as I have said before, involved a them and us approach, including the provision of separate canteens and car parks for management and staff. I still see evidence of separate car parks for management and staff, not necessarily in businesses. We now have an American model of management, which is much more open and stresses togetherness, rather than the antagonistic, class-based relationship between management and staff that was characteristic of the British model.