Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

Some employers now believe the minimum wage is a decent rate of pay and it is acceptable. I deal with individual cases in which migrant workers in particular are employed on the minimum wage, which is regarded as acceptable. I frequently hear the justification that people are being paid the minimum wage, that we have social protection even in terms of this services directive because employers must pay the minimum rate. Deputy Fiona O'Malley is right that we have not got there yet. However, if we embark on a future in which the minimum wage is no longer the floor but the ceiling or is regarded as a decent and acceptable wage to be paid across the economy, we have no good future for workers, either migrant or national.

I welcome migrant workers to this country. I have spent most of the past 20 years dealing with them. I have defended every category of them. I have defended the notion of asylum seekers when Government Deputies in my constituency and others had different views on these matters. I put my record up for anybody to examine in this regard. We will need migrants not only to build our economy, but also to enrich our society as they have done in the past decade. This is the way we should go forward.

We have much more to do. We need to provide for integration and we need to understand and respect cultural difference. We must do this on a consensual basis. While it is possible to point fingers in many directions, I hope that the debate that has now ignited will not degenerate into some political slanging match, but will be constructed on how to create a society and economy that will respect all its workers, where all will be treated equally and well, and where our future is at the highest level of scale of payment and conditions, not dragging ourselves down to the lowest. I believe that, unamended, this directive would seriously damage that vision for a proper, healthy, prosperous and integrated future for our country.

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