Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses very much for their presentations. I missed the start unfortunately, but I read their briefs before coming in. I would like to go back to the minimum wage for a minute if the committee does not mind. We discussed it at length in previous sessions in the context of banded hours contracts, and we spoke to the witnesses about that. I was concerned about the comment made by Mr. McDonnell that it does not matter what wage people are paid. It really does matter to people because many people - Deputy Collins referred to 80,000 - are on the minimum wage. That is a problem we have. We are talking about taxes and tax cuts, and Mr. McDonnell said it does not matter what one pays. The costs of housing and transport need to be addressed, and I agree with him 100% on that. The State, for example, pays almost €500 million a year on the family income supplement. Some 57,000 people are accessing the family income supplement and that is because of the low minimum wage we have. Mr. McDonnell disagrees with that, saying it is the second highest in, but obviously costs here are higher and they need to be addressed. If that €500 million was put into infrastructure, it would improve transport, allowing people to get to work more cheaply. It could provide houses and the rents would go down. As Senator Gavan said, we need a massive housing investment to deliver these houses. Then the pressure might come off wages, but we are where we are, and I believe the minimum wage needs to be increased more quickly. We need to get to the living wage, but we also need to address housing and transport.