Mr. Neil McDonnell:

I do not know who is paying €350 a week because that is below the minimum wage. If Deputy Murphy knows of an employer who is doing that, he or she should be reported. I deliberately went into detail with reference to our Jobs Kill Zone report. The minimum wage is now €10.20 and there is an argument for a living wage in excess of €12. The point we are making is that the jobs kills zone tops out at €30,000 per annum - that is equivalent to €17.41 per hour. I do not know at what level Deputy Murphy wants to set the minimum wage because he is using loaded comments like "poverty wages". If it is the decision of the members as legislators to increase the minimum wage to €17.41, do so but there will be economic and employment consequences.

We find this debate very circular, sterile and not very productive. The fact is, if the cost of labour keeps being increased, employers will use less labour. I referred Members of the Houses to the Seattle minimum wage study, which was a large-scale study of what happened when Seattle increased its minimum wage from $9 to $11. It did not have much effect in Seattle because Seattle was going gangbuster but there were severe impacts elsewhere. Washington state is very much like Ireland. It is a rural state with a big city on a seaboard. The increase in the minimum wage did little or nothing, or reversed the situation, for lower paid people outside Seattle.

I do not see why we should be at loggerheads about this. There are things that can be done within our social protection system that do not involve bidding up the cost of labour. It should be the priority of members to look at that rather than simply putting up the minimum wage to €17 an hour.