Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Deputy is supportive of the Bill, which is incredibly important to people on low pay. As Tánaiste, I am delighted that I have focused particularly in the House on the establishment of the Low Pay Commission and getting the work on precarious hours up and running. We expect the Low Pay Commission report and the report of the University of Limerick on precarious pay and zero-hour contracts to be available to us fairly shortly. We need to get the Bill through, notwithstanding the Deputy's interest and contribution to the debate. The contributions of Members have been very valuable. We have had a great deal of debate on the Bill. There was repeated discussion and debate on some of the amendments, which used up a lot of time that might properly have been devoted to Deputy Tóibín's amendment. That is how the House addressed how the amendments were dealt with. As we expect that the Low Pay Commission will release its report shortly, I want to see the legislation being passed. Notwithstanding the Deputy's support for the Bill and his contribution to the debate, as well as the valuable contributions of others, we need to get the legislation into law so that we can proceed to implement improvements in the statutory minimum wage in Ireland and move to a living wage. That is the big picture. While I appreciate the Deputy's problems with regard to his own amendments, we should look at the big picture and how the Bill will help people on low pay if we get it dealt with today.

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