Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I am sorry Deputy O'Brien and Deputy Blaney have left the Chamber. What Deputy O'Brien said is not true. Deputy Penrose and Deputy Wall have clearly stated tonight that the Labour Party will reverse this decision. The decision to reduce the minimum wage is a core issue for us. Our motion refers to the threshold of decency and that is what this is about. Deputy Lynch has spoken just now about the agenda that is really at work here, which is not just about the minimum wage. We do not subscribe to that agenda.

Deputy O'Brien spoke about the difference between the person who works for 40 hours per week and earns €306 and the person on welfare who gets €188. That is absolutely pathetic and is not where any of this should have started. This should have started at the top. This is about cutting people at the very bottom of the scale on welfare and on income, and it is not acceptable. Before I came into this Chamber, I had to leave a meeting with the Dell redundant workers group. I said to the people with me that I had to come in here to speak about the minimum wage. The man sitting beside me said: "They want me to work, but I will lose my mortgage interest relief and my medical card to work for €306 a week." On top of that, these people will now be included in the universal charge as well.

This decision is coming from people who are not living in the real world any more. The real world is about people who are struggling to make ends meet. Last night, Deputy Penrose pointed out that electricity prices, bus fares, prices for bread, coal and milk, rent and so-called voluntary contributions for school have all gone up significantly since 2007. These are things on which people spend their money and they will now have to struggle on these lower levels of income.

The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation stated last night that "According to the latest figures from the CSO for the second quarter of this year, the minimum wage rate now applies to about 3.2% of the workforce and has a disproportionate effect on employers in the hospitality, retail, manufacturing and horticultural sectors." What has so much more of an impact on those sectors, particularly the first two sectors, is the fact that people do not have money to spend. People on the minimum wage and welfare have to spend all their money in the local economy because they have to spend it, otherwise they will not survive. They are not putting money away to go on holidays. They are not the people we saw on "Reeling in the Years" from 2007 who were going off shopping in New York. Deputy Rabbitte made the point that the comparison made with 2007 was at the top of the boom. We are talking about people who are struggling to survive in our economy. Are we saying that the people who work in the backbreaking horticultural sector must do so for a wage of just over €300? As Deputy Shortall pointed out, the actual pay of those workers is less than €300. This is not acceptable in a civilised society.

We are really talking about a two tier society, where we are suggesting that the people in the lowest jobs - often the hardest jobs - are somehow different from hospital consultants and the people at the top of the Civil Service and the private sector, who somehow need all this extra money to survive. It seems we cannot go attacking them, so we have to start at the bottom with people on the minimum wage. We should not be starting at the bottom, but at the top. If the country is in the kind of trouble that it is, which was brought about by Fianna Fáil, then it is the people who can afford to pay who should be paying, and not the people at the bottom of the ladder. The Labour Party emphatically states that we are totally against this measure and we will reverse it when we are in government.

See this speech in context