Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The way around the problem is to increase the funding provided for community centres specifically to increase the wages of the workers they employ. It should be ring-fenced for that purpose. I know that in reply the Minister of State will argue that the Department does not have the money to do so, but that is simply not tenable. We have the highest number of high net worth individuals - the super rich - that we have ever had in this country. We are also meant to be in recovery. We have seen a major increase in wealth in recent years.

I walked into a community centre in my area the day after the budget was announced and the manager immediately said to me all of the people there were worse off on that day than they had been the previous day. Their wages had not been increased since the national minimum wage had not bee increased, but obviously other things were increased in the budget. How can the Government stand over this? We have a problem and I am not for one moment suggesting a downgrading of the salaries of the temporary workers employed. We can imagine how a person feels when he or she is employed directly when others can come in and work fewer hours and be paid more. The Government cannot stand over this. The only way around the problem is to ensure community centres have sufficient funds and increase the national minimum wage to make it a real living wage, an issue on which we had a debate earlier this week. We proposed that the national minimum wage be €15 per hour, a rate that applies in a number of US states. It also applies in other countries.

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