Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

With regard to what she said today, it is welcome to see an increase in the number of jobs but I argue that we have to put an emphasis on the type of jobs. The first thing to point out is the disparity between what the live register says about employment figures and what the unemployment figures say. While the Minister acknowledges this, it is important to re-emphasise there were 315,600 people on the live register for the first quarter this year whereas the unemployment figure was 169,700. Given the difference of nearly 150,000, it is an important figure to acknowledge. This means there is a huge tranche of people who are probably in very low paid, part-time work. Many are still on job activation schemes, which remain hugely controversial, such as JobBridge, Gateway in the local authorities and the initiatives for graduates, which are not paid at all - lip-service is all that is paid to them as workers. There is a huge tranche of working people who are still being very badly exploited.

Other speakers referred to the figures on the low wage economy that is Ireland. The figures Unite published yesterday show that our wages are 6% below the European average but if we are compared to northern and central Europe, which is probably more of a realistic comparison and which takes in the Nordic countries and countries such as France, Germany and Belgium, we are 18% below the average. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work that is carried out, apart from it being part-time and low paid, is in wholesale, retail and hospitality. If we sought to bring those workers up to the European average for those sectors alone, we would be talking about a pay increase of between 23% and 25%.

The Luas drivers came in for a lot of criticism for looking for increases of this nature and they were on much higher pay than people in the retail industry. Nevertheless, had they won those increases, they would today be setting a trend and pulling up by the bootstraps those who are disadvantaged in this country. This is one of the reasons we supported them. We knew that had they won that struggle, it would help to raise everybody's boats - not the yachts, but the boats.

In the past five years, workers have had a pay increase of approximately 1% while managerial and professional grades have had pay increases of about 11%. There is huge inequality in terms of work, pay and the nature of work. Most work done by low paid workers in this country is in finance, call centres, restaurants and hospitality.

Ireland is held up globally as a great example of how the free market works, with free market policies of little or no regulation and the move to privatising public services, leaving everything to the market because it will solve all our problems. We have to rethink that and look at how we will solve both the problems of workers and of the wider society in terms of creating our own indigenous industry. There are many indigenous, sustainable industries we could focus on. I appeal to the Minister to think about this in the coming period.

We should start with renewable energy, which could be developed greatly. We need to look at how to do that, given it would help the green economy and our carbon footprint and it would also help to create and sustain skilled, long-term and properly paid jobs. Dealing with the housing crisis would also do this. We need to build social housing. Why not create a State-funded social housing enterprise that can take bricklayers, plumbers and carpenters off the dole and also provide education for future skilled workers of this nature through apprenticeships? We could thereby begin to solve the housing crisis but this would have to be public and social housing, not from the private market.

We also need to look at water conservation. A big row in the Dáil and across society for the past five years has been about water and the fight against privatising water. Conserving water could be dealt with by creating well-sustained, well-paid public jobs in dealing with leaks and retrofitting homes with brown and green water methods and with dual-flush loos. We need to really look at providing decent sustainable jobs on the one hand while on the other, dealing with the real challenges that face us in regard to public services.

I want to put that argument. Others will ask how I and my group propose to pay for it so I will repeat the old mantra. Look at our taxation system and corporation tax, look at what the very wealthy get way with and begin to look at progressive taxation as a way of creating sustainable jobs and, at the same time, deal with hard-pressed public services.

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