Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The slogan of the campaign for a minimum wage in the United States was "$15 now because the rent won't wait". That is a slogan that will have a lot of echoes among a lot of young and not so young low-paid workers in this country this morning, given the shocking figures we have seen fromdaft.ie, which do not shock because we are all so used to it now.

The Minister of State mentioned six consecutive increases in the minimum wage. He should not worry about six consecutive increases. What about 37 consecutive quarterly increases in the price of rent in this State and the latest blow of 10%-plus annualised increases, if quarter 4 of 2021 is anything to go by? Of course, the highest rents in the country are in Dublin but let us not take the worst example. Let us take an alternative example in my own city of Cork, where the average price of rent is now more than €1,500 per month. Does the Minister of State know how much of the wage of a full-time worker on the minimum wage that would eat up? Let me tell him. It is 84%. How is anyone meant to feed themselves after that?

A woman told me recently:

This is my choice now with these cost of living increases. I can be reasonably well fed in a freezing house or I can starve in a warm house. They are the choices that I face.

Another woman told me her two sons are renting.

They have had to come back to the family home because they cannot afford the rent any more. What does that do to the weekly grocery and electricity bills? That is a story that will be recognised by tens of thousands of mams and dads throughout the country.

Let us come back to a central point in this debate. I have said in the House a few times and I will keep saying that the Minister of State and the Government have effectively cut the pay of the lowest-paid workers in the State. Last year the Government implemented one of its six consecutive 1% increases in the minimum wage. The European average was four times that. This year, the Government increased it by 2.9% at a time when official inflation, which is far below the rate of inflation for the low-paid, was 5.5%. The rate of inflation was nearly double the increase the Government conceded, which is a de facto cut in the pay of minimum wage workers, the lowest-paid workers in the country. This year, the average increase in minimum wage across the EU is 6%, more than double what the Government is paying out. An important point was raised in the debate by Deputy Paul Murphy when he talked about the wages paid to young people. Some 90% of the minimum wage, or €9.45 per hour, is paid to 19-year olds, while 18-year olds are paid 80%, or €8.40 per hour. For under-18s the figure is 70% of the minimum wage, or €7.35 per hour. This discrimination against young workers must stop. We need equal pay for work of equal value. That is a basic principle that we are asserting.

During the debate the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, made the claim that Irish workers are receiving among the highest wages in the EU. Workers will be in disbelief at that claim when they go to the supermarket checkout or when they scroll through their phones and look at their bank balances and their gut instinct is right. It is a false claim and fake news. In 2020, the Republic of Ireland ranked tenth in the Union for labour costs, including wages, pension contributions and social insurance. This was below the eurozone average and below the EU15 average. That is bad enough but on the other side of the coin we find that Ireland had the second-highest price level for consumer goods. In reality we were joint first because there is only a fraction of a difference between Ireland and Denmark in top place. The consumer price level in this Republic is 40% above the EU average. What a double-whammy that is with wages on the one hand and prices on the other. This is an international crisis, as the Government has argued, but it impacts particularly hard in this country for those reasons.

The Minister of State spoke about steps the Government is taking or trying to take and he is trying to steer the debate away from wages and onto the question of price controls but we will meet him on his own ground and debate price controls. Taking €100 off an electricity bill might be 15% of the bill paid for by the State with the ordinary person having to delve into his or her pocket for the other 85%. It is a fraction and a pathetic gesture. If the Government wants real price controls then we should debate rent. At a minimum, we should have a national rent freeze, although in reality at this stage we should be talking about legislation to cut the price of rent. The carbon tax increases the Minister of State is supporting that are coming on 1 May are already becoming an issue. A strong demand will bubble up in society that this increase be scrapped. Then there is the big issue and the elephant in the corner, namely the USC. This is the tax that had to be brought in because of the austerity era and the IMF. It was promised that when austerity was over the USC would be over but the Government has kept it in place. That will become an issue as well and I do not see any action from the Government on these fronts.

The following is a quote from Daniel McConnell on www.examiner.ie this morning:

The Government is bracing itself for industrial strife as public and private sector workers are demanding pay increases of at least 5%

The article quotes the deputy general secretary of the largest trade union in the country, SIPTU, who says the Government has a responsibility “to step up” on the issue of low pay. I do not want to make extravagant claims and the motion is not solely or mainly responsible for this; rather, it is the pressure of working people from below but there has been value in putting this motion down because it has helped and assisted to change the debate this week. It is not just about the issue of price controls. We want real price controls and the Government is only paying lip service to it. The issue of wages is beginning to come onto the agenda and this motion has played a role in assisting to put that on the agenda. That is important because worker organisation and action are key here.

The Government is a sham on this issue. I ask the Minister of State not to make me laugh at the idea that the Government is supporting this motion and that the House is all at one. The motion states that there must be an emergency increase in the national minimum wage by 1 May. I know, the Minister of State knows and everybody listening into this debate knows that the Government has no intention of doing that so I ask him not to try to cod anyone. The Government should have the guts to support its position and if it is going to vote for it then it should implement it. If the Government is against it then it should own its political position and vote against it. It should not engage in the slíbhín politics of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and vote for something with no intention of implementing it because that is precisely what I have heard from the Minister of State today.

I will make a point to working people who listened to that previous point. We will exert the pressure in here and do our best but the key is that on the ground they organise and submit pay claims. Hopefully there will be no need for industrial action and employers, seeing that workers are serious, will concede the pay claims. If not, workers must be prepared to fight and we will stand with them and back them because this is not just a cost-of-living crisis; rather, it is a cost-of-survival crisis and working people must not be the whipping boys as this Government, despite all its fine words, intends them to be.

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