Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Paul Murphy raised the issue of retail and hospitality workers. Again, just on the minimum wage, ours is the second highest in Europe right now. Even if you take in purchasing power, we are the sixth highest within the European Union. I think we need balance. We are above the average European wage. Again, we support wage increases, particularly linked to productivity. We do not want to go chasing inflation forever because that does not work, but we do believe we can introduce measures that will help people on low incomes and that is something we are working on.

Deputy Barry misrepresented what I said, but that is par for the course. In terms of the de facto situation around pay and so on, pay has increased. In fact, pay more generally has increased over the past 12 months. I have a figure here for the growth in pay more generally. The Central Bank expects the domestic economy to grow by more than 7%. It is projecting that wage rises will outpace price increases over the next three years. That is what the Central Bank is predicting, notwithstanding the spike in inflation this year. The most important figure, though, is that unemployment is at 7.8%. The rate was above 20% in November 2020.

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