Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, has withdrawn from the Low Pay Commission. Its general secretary, Patricia King, stated that it did so because the commission was not prepared to go beyond an increase of 1% in the minimum wage for 2021. A 1% increase would mean an increase of 10 cent an hour for the workers affected - the thousands of low-paid workers who have kept us going during this pandemic. Overnight, when the going got tough, many of those workers were classified as essential. When the chips were down it was not to the high rollers, bankers, corporate landlords or millionaire executives that we turned; no, in our time of need, it was to retail workers who stock our shelves, delivery van drivers, supply chain workers, carers and cleaners that we turned.

These workers were essential, these workers are essential and these workers have always been essential. They were commended and cheered, but they cannot feed their children with applause and flowery rhetoric. They rely on a meaningful increase in the minimum wage to pay their bills, rents and mortgages. Those workers need decent pay - a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. There is something very wrong when members of a Low Pay Commission cannot agree to a meaningful increase for low paid workers, workers who were rightly described as heroes only a few short weeks ago.

One in five workers is a low-paid worker in Ireland, and 100,000 people at work live in poverty. That is the reality. The Taoiseach and his Government have turned their backs on these workers. The new employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, locks 153,000 of the lowest paid workers out and the Government has been put at risk of losing their jobs. It has left their employers in a terrible position, because they do not have the money or resources to pay the very modest wages. The Government, therefore, has hurt not only low-paid workers but also businesses. The pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, has also been cut, a move certain to drive more workers and households into debt and distress, and this has been done at a time tens of thousands of workers remain out of work because of the Covid-19 crisis.

To summarise the situation, since 1 September, over the past three weeks, the Government has locked 153,000 of the lowest paid workers out of the EWSS, the PUP has been cut for those losing their jobs because of Government-imposed public health restrictions, and now we have a Low Pay Commission that will not deal with low pay. Is this the Taoiseach's version of "we are all in this together"? I ask that because it strikes me that all this has the fingerprints of the Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Varadkar, and Fine Gael all over it. What does the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, propose to do to reverse these absolutely disastrous decisions that will injure and hurt low-paid workers and their families?

See this speech in context