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

I might be difficult as well in that case. I thank Sinn Féin for moving this very useful motion. It is striking that when social welfare recipients have been told to wait because of economic uncertainties and Brexit, we are now hearing the old refrain both from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that labour must wait once again as well. If the provisions of the Sinn Féin motion were implemented, it would bring great times for low-paid workers because with an average 40-hour week, they would get an extra €100 into their pockets.

It is interesting that IBEC, the employers' organisation, disagreed with the 30 cent per hour increase suggested by the Low Pay Commission and wanted it reduced to 15 cent per hour. The idea of giving 137,000 of the lowest-paid workers, who are overwhelmingly female and likely to be poorer and from minority backgrounds, any sort of increase seemed to be too much for the Government. It seems it would wreck the economy if cleaners, retail and hospitality workers might have a few extra bob in their pockets. We can compare this with the largesse that the Government displays to the chief executives of multinational corporations. It had no problem granting them a special assignee relief programme, SARP, giving chief executives special continued tax status on their earnings. That is a move costing this State €28 million in forgone tax.

Low-paid workers are overwhelmingly concentrated in the sectors of the economy where profit levels are back to or exceeding the pre-crash boom levels but workers are not being treated in the same way. There is no justification like a fragility in an economy but the bogeyman this time is Brexit. That is the justification for telling workers they cannot even have 15 cent per hour and they are getting absolutely nothing. At the same time, we have the lowest levels of PRSI paid by employers and one of the lowest levels of benefits paid to workers. We do not pay workers for their first three days out sick and our levels of maternity and other benefits are the lowest in Europe. Our safeguards for workers to have the right to join a union are also the weakest in Europe.

At this point I pay tribute to the workers in Delfin English School who are currently striking for a basic right to belong to a union, organise and get paid for the hours they work. That is not even happening. Real and substantive change will occur when workers fight back for their rights rather than waiting for this House to deliver them from on high.

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