Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the statements and the discussion so far. I want to go back over the timeline of the Bill. It was introduced in 2022 and was debated on Second Stage in June 2023. At that stage, the Government moved a timed amendment to, in effect, kick the can down the road for a year. The argument for that was, and I quote the Minister of State, Deputy Neale Richmond:

To cut to the chase, the Government is proposing a timed amendment of 12 months' delay on this Bill. The timed amendment quite simply is to allow the current examination of the sub-minima rates of the minimum wage by the Low Pay Commission to continue. Following this examination, recommendations will be made to Government for the retention or abolition of these rates. It is important we give the Low Pay Commission the time and space to carry out this review.

The same argument was made multiple times by Government speakers in that debate. This year's delay was to give time to the Low Pay Commission and the Government amendment was passed. We were then delayed by a year.

There was then the publication of the Low Pay Commission report in March 2024, which unanimously recommended the abolition of the sub-minima wage rates. Now, six months on, we are hearing that the ESRI and Low Pay Commission reports are not good enough and we need a new economic impact assessment. Would young people who are being exploited on very low wages not be forgiven for thinking that this is the Government continuing to kick the can down the road and moving goalposts? There was no mention of the need for an economic impact assessment when this was first discussed in June 2023, but we are now hearing that things have to be delayed even further.