Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Yes. We will share on the basis of four minutes, four minutes and two minutes, respectively.

I would like to start by setting out what we would like for workers. There is a good deal of detail in and much merit to the motion. We want people to be able to work for a week and earn enough money to lead a dignified life, that they can work with security in their job, with certainty that they will have a job, that their hours will not be changed around, and that they will be treated with respect.

The Social Democrats are committed to supporting the phased introduction of a living wage based on the real cost of living; on banning zero-hour contracts; on addressing the prevalence of if-and-when contracts, as identified in the University of Limerick study; in supporting the ICTU charter, including the right to representation and collective bargaining, respect, equality and ethics at work and fair public procurement; and in closing the quite outrageous legal loophole in company law that lets a company split its obligations to its staff from the assets of the company, which is what we saw happen in Clerys. That should not be allowed. It needs to be remedied and I hope it is one of the issues Minister is seeking to address quickly.

The two big problems that this motion seeks to address are as follows. The first is the divide between how much money many workers are left with in Ireland at the end of the week or the end of the month and how much it costs to lead a dignified life in this country. The second is the increasing lack of security and certainty being faced by many workers and their families due to factors such as the rise in the prevalence of zero-hour contracts. We need to address these issues but we also need to do much more. We need to reduce the cost of living. It costs 20% more to live in Ireland than it does in Europe on average. Our child care fees are the second highest in the European Union and are now over one quarter of an average family's income. Insurance costs have gone up by about one third in the past year. Rents in my constituency have gone up nearly 10% in the same period.

All of these rises are impacting harshly on living standards, in particular for low and middle-income families with young children. They undermine the ability of many people to make ends meet. Simply cutting taxes or increasing the minimum wage will not address the cost issue. In fact, cutting taxes is likely to increase the cost of living in the country. If we aspire, as we should, to a country where everyone has enough money on finishing a week's work for his or her family to lead a dignified life, we must reduce systematically the cost of living. It is just too expensive to live in this country. The other thing reducing the cost of living would do would be to greatly reduce the need for social transfers. There is massive wage inequality in Ireland, second in the EU, which is averaged out through huge social transfers. That is not how it should work. People should be able to work for a week, take their wages and lead decent lives. They should not be reliant on these social transfers. Indeed, their counterparts in other countries are not.

The Social Democrats consider that a great deal needs to be done in terms of the issues laid out in the motion. We also need to look at the cost of living and we must look at the costs of doing business. We must address them all to get to a position where people can lead dignified lives based on what they earn.

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