Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that we are having this debate but it comes just months after the Labour Party left government when so many of the things it is seeking now could have been implemented. One cannot but notice that. We watched with dismay over the past five years when things like JobPath, JobBridge and various other activation schemes were introduced. While there is a place for internships, there was evidence of job displacement. Indeed, the MOMENTUM scheme was scrapped mid-stream which left a lot of people between things. It was as if people were being used as guinea pigs. Many schemes were exploited and some replaced real jobs. The whole area of JobPath is a real problem. It has failed in the UK but the same people are employed to come in here notwithstanding the likelihood that it will fail here too. Zero-hour and never-never contracts have created a culture where it has become almost acceptable to treat people as chattel, use them when and if needed and discard them at will. Individuals and families are in the position of not knowing from one day to the next what their income is going to be, what they will require in relation to child care or if they will have a job at the end of the day. The social protection system is being used in many cases as a subsidy for some employers. It can be argued that it is very unfair to employers who do not seek that and pay better wages.

The manifesto of the Social Democrats set out a requirement to introduce a living wage based on the real cost of living determined in consultation with the living wage campaign and employers. We called for a ban on zero-hours contracts as well as mechanisms to address the growing prevalence of if-and-when contracts. A society's success is based on the security of its citizens, but how can people feel secure if they do not know from one hour to the next if they have a job or not? The construction sector has seen the issue of bogus self-employment. For years, the construction sector worked under arrangements like C2 contracts and when the crash came, this group ended up being very exposed with little or no entitlements due to that arrangement.

We have to take the long view on those kinds of areas. There must be protections. The living wage is vital but so too is addressing the cost of living as has already been said. We have proposed the introduction of a series of measures which would reduce the cost of living. A static wage is of little use if the costs of housing, energy, insurance, child care, etc., continue to go out of control. We welcome any and every initiative to protect and support workers, but talk is one thing. The Labour Party was in government and it would have meant an awful lot more when its members talked about these things had they actually done something about it when they were in that position. Clearly, talking about it in opposition is a very different thing given where they have come from.

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