Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

That is fine. I speak in support of all the relevant amendments but in particular amendment No. 7 tabled by Deputy Tóibín on broadening the remit of this commission and, in particular, inserting in the Bill, which we have also done with one of our amendments, the question of a living wage because this should not be just about establishing a bottom floor in terms of a minimum wage but a wage on which people can live. People have a right to live and should have wages to reflect the cost of living. A good deal of research was done by the Nevin Economic Research Institute, NERI, and others to emerge with the living wage which, for a single adult, in the best case scenario, was about €11 an hour when it was originally proposed some years ago. They have done new work in recent months which has increased the living wage to €11.50 an hour. That does not take into account people who have children. We have to have an aim of establishing that people achieve the living wage and it should be an aim of the Low Pay Commission to do that as opposed to solely dealing with the question of the minimum wage.

Our amendment No. 18 is a call on the Government to face up to the reality of bogus self-employment practices. The Irish Timesrecently headlined on the issue but, interestingly, did not mention the construction industry. The very bidding process for State construction contracts feeds into a situation where so-called self-employed people end up earning less than the minimum wage, for example, in Rhatigan's, where the workers were on €5 an hour. When the big construction companies enter bids they make claims that they can lay X number of blocks for Y amount of euro but when we take into account the physical limitations in terms of the number of blocks that can be laid per hour, it can be seen that not only are the REA rates not being observed but the minimum wage rates are not being observed either. It is essential that is inserted in this Bill.

We are also in favour of something the Minister of State has spoken about previously, namely, other legislation to deal with that, but our amendments are before the House and we believe they should be accepted as an indication that we will take this issue seriously.

Those who are meant to be taking it seriously, namely, Revenue, are not and as such it is losing out on massive amounts of money. This is a case of worker exploitation on a massive scale and the State being ripped off. Government can send out a signal in this regard today by accepting this amendment.

See this speech in context