Sir, – People Before Profit's suggestion regarding our minimum wage, already the second highest in the EU behind Luxembourg, would bring the absolute minimum cost of having a full-time employee to €39,832 a year when holiday, sick pay and employer PRSI are included ("Dáil hears call for €15 per hour minimum wage", News, February 9th). Apart from the inevitable increases in prices to pay for it, multinational employers will question why it costs the same to hire a dishwasher in Dublin as it costs them to hire a research chemist in Lisbon.
Give it 10 years and PBP will have solved both inflation and the housing crisis as hundreds of thousands of jobs will move abroad, leaving empty houses and no demand for local goods or services. – Yours, etc,
CHARLES McLAUGHLIN,
Portobello,
Dublin 8.