Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I also welcome the Bill. Whatever about its imperfections which its proposer accepts, the key point to it is that it deals with hundreds of thousands of the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers in the State. As has been stated, most of these workers are women or immigrants or from other vulnerable sectors of society and were extremely low paid workers even before the JLCs were struck down by the courts. When the Government considers the issue of whether to allow the Bill to proceed to the next Stage, its members should simply consider what it might be like to live on €288 per week because that is poverty. Moreover, those who work in these sectors are the same people who have been hit with the universal social charge and rising gas and electricity bills. In general, they come from families, other members of which have been hit by the brutal social welfare cuts imposed in the last few years. These are sectors of society that simply cannot take any more and all that is being asked is that some basic level of protection be re-established for them.

As Deputy Clare Daly has noted, the pre-existing protections were far from adequate. It is simply unacceptable that Members of the House should propose to weaken already completely inadequate protections for these sectors of society. I find it nauseating that those who earn seven, eight or ten times more than the people concerned could even consider weakening the inadequate protections for the aforementioned workers. It is utterly nauseating that people bang on about Sunday premium payments and the need to do something about them when talking about workers on this level of wages who perform some of the most menial and difficult jobs and live in poverty or on the borderline thereof.

The Government has been asked repeatedly to give reassurance, in so far as it intends to deal with this issue, that nothing it will do in this regard will lead to any diminution in the wages and conditions of the workers covered by JLC agreements. However, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, has refused to give this commitment and all the signals suggest he will bow down to voracious employers who wish to hit at the lowest paid workers, that is, the working poor. This is appalling and there is no justification whatsoever for it. As the Duffy-Walsh report made clear, it will not create jobs. Furthermore, apart from the injustice and poverty it will mean for the workers themselves, it is not necessary to read the aforementioned report to understand that hitting at the wages and conditions of the lowest paid workers who spend every penny of their money in the economy because they are obliged to so do to survive will do nothing but further depress demand. There is absolutely no justification and it is immoral in the extreme to even consider dismantling these protections.

However, there is no surprise that despite the Government's protestations that it would do something about the court ruling, it is moving very slowly to do anything about it. I believe it actually wants to allow employers to create a race to the bottom because of its addiction to the failed economic dogma about competition at all costs, letting the market rip and all the rest of it. The union representatives who briefed Members on this issue today told them that since the High Court had struck down the JLCs, wages, conditions and terms for low paid workers were imploding as the most unscrupulous employers went on the attack. I appeal to the Labour Party, in particular, that if it has any consideration at all for workers, most of whom probably voted for it, to support the Bill and for the Government to give a commitment to Members that it will do nothing to dismantle the inadequate protections available for the lowest paid workers.

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