Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If I need more time, I hope the Acting Chairman will give me some, because I took his initial direction that we were only speaking on amendment No. 7. I will not speak for too long.

Most of my amendments are to do with the necessity for a living wage. The Government has a major opportunity to deal with this, an opportunity that it may not have again. That means we should grasp this opportunity with both hands. Work is currently being undertaken on an independent basis by the Living Wage Technical Group, which is a group of progressive organisations. We believe the Low Pay Commission needs to undertake similar work. To do that, it needs to broaden the remit of issues to take into consideration.

Amendment No. 14 refers to economic inequality. Nowhere in the Bill is the commission instructed to consider poverty when making recommendations to the Minister. It is difficult to believe that we could have such a debate without the crisis of poverty being hardwired into the Bill. The Bill is too heavily weighted towards a limited number of economic measurements and is not helpful in tackling economic inequality or rebuilding the economy.

Others have mentioned that the percentage share of the national income comprising wages has crashed. I understand there has been a fall of 20% in the past 20 years, which is in line with other European countries, but it is still a significant shift in how an economy works. In other words, an economy is not working for the people who are working in it any longer. Some 50% of all women in the State earn less than €20,000, which is a shocking figure for this generation. It seems completely unreasonable that the issue of income inequality between men and women is not hardwired into the Bill.

The Minister of State said the minimum wage was blind to gender and therefore everybody would be treated the same. However, we know everybody is not treated the same, and one's gender determines one's income, to a certain extent, under a minimum wage. Unless the infrastructure of the minimum wage is changed or how we deal with low pay is changed in a way that takes gender inequality into consideration with regard to wages, we will not fix the issue.

I refer to amendment No. 18. The construction industry in this country is in crisis with regard to how it operates. Decent construction work should involve direct employment, with people receiving a wage, sick pay, holiday pay and the entitlements that citizens should expect. Recruitment companies in this country are advertising for people on the RCT system to do work that is normally done by those paid a direct wage. They tell companies they do not owe the workers any entitlements - holidays, pensions or anything else.

These companies operate in the chasm the Government has left in company and contract law. They are making fun of the Government with regard to commitments. I know of people who worked on the Kishoge site who were told by their employer they were now self-employed and gave them their wages. They thought the money was for one individual, but the employer told them it was for all five people in the room. This is what is happening under the chaos of the Government's relevant contracts tax legislation.

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