Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Labour Party supports this motion. A lot of things come to mind when talking about the national minimum wage. We need to picture how a parent feels who has worked a hard week on the minimum wage and then wonders how he or she can feed and clothe his or her children and keep them warm. There is an element of fear in the motion but there is also an element of humiliation – that people are working so hard but perhaps have to make choices between food or warmth for their children.

This motion is important because we live in a low-wage economy. According to the OECD, 23% of Irish workers are statistically in low pay. It is a massive issue. When Government representatives talk about going back to normal, for many people going back to normal was the grind of working hard to try to provide for their family, but still at the end of the week asking themselves these devastating and humiliating questions as to whether they could feed, clothe and keep their children warm.

The Government has rejected all of the presentations given to it about the cost of living and the reality of Irish life, including the Labour Party motion introduced last week by my colleague Deputy Nash, who also established the Low Pay Commission when the Labour Party was last in government. The Government's argument is that tax cuts are the way to bring down the cost of living. We talk to the Government about the fact that nowhere in Europe do people pay for a GP visit except in Ireland, or must families consider whether they have the money to bring their child to the doctor. People in other European countries do not have those humiliating decisions to make. Other European countries do not have the expectation of a second mortgage payment when it comes to childcare.

When we talk about going to school and back-to-school costs, other countries just do not have the expectation of parents having to put their hands in their pocket every time they get a communication from their school. We have so many things that families are just expected to pay for that the Government thinks can be resolved by a tax cut. We just had a presentation from the Minister of State who told us €520 million was spent on tax cuts that do nothing for the person on the minimum wage. Whenever it is suggested we increase the minimum wage, you can predict that employer representatives will come out and say it would have a devastating effect on the economy and jobs. That has been proven time and again to be an economic lie because they just do not want to pay the workers.

This is connected to what was suggested earlier about trade union recognition. Unfortunately, we do not have the same collective bargaining rights as other European countries enjoy and that is absolutely linked to why we have such an epidemic of low pay in Ireland. Some people do not believe it but 23% of Irish workers are on low pay. Some 40% of workers under 30 years are in insecure work. All the things we ask the Government to do around childcare, school costs, GP care and rent are things it simply will not do. It puts it all in the tax cut bracket which benefits those who do not effectively need any relief compared with people with the humiliating question in their heads at the end of the working week.

The suggestion we would increase the minimum wage to something approaching a living wage is something the Government should be embracing. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to establish a living wage. We are two years into this Government. We were all elected this day two years ago. I know the Government was not founded this day two years ago but nonetheless we are approaching the midway point of this Government and yet there is still no energy or sense of emergency around the low pay epidemic or establishing the rationale to give someone that basic sense of dignity and pride that he or she can be a member of this society, engage in it and interact with others on the basis of a sense of equality and decent living standards and eradicate the humiliating question that person may have at the end of the week.

In our amendment, we suggest the minimum wage be linked to inflation. That is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. We have to grapple with this epidemic. In any other country where so many people are working in low-paid employment and those people are disproportionately women and migrant workers, it would be at the top of the enterprise agenda. Employer organisations should be mortified. They should be embarrassed and ashamed this is allowed to happen. It is absolutely linked to workers in this Republic feeling they do not have the same power when they are members of a trade union as other workers would have across the EU or the world because the collective bargaining rights in Ireland are not strong enough.

What do we do if we give people enough money to survive the week? They have a different sense of themselves, their future and of the country and the community in which they live. They have a different sense of vision and positivity to hand to their children. They can say to their children that the country, the State, the Government and their employer has their back and that everyone effectively believes they have a right to live through their week, to work hard but be in a position to pay their bills and not have the heartbreaking flash across their brain when they are at home at night, looking at their children asleep, wondering if they can feed and clothe them and keep them warm. A living wage is the least we can do so that our citizens can afford to live.

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