Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Deputies who have brought this Bill forward as I cannot stay for the debate. We are debating the TRIPS waiver at the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and I do not want to miss that. My inability to bilocate is hampering me once again.

I thank the Deputies for bringing this legislation forward. It is very clear we will not tackle poverty unless we tackle low wages. I welcome my colleague David Joyce to the Gallery. I am reminded of the words of my former colleague, who is now the General Secretary of ICTU, when she said that as a society there must be a threshold of decency below which we will not go. The living wage represents that threshold of decency. I am not going to pretend this has always been Labour Party policy. In 2015, when the Low Pay Commission was being brought in, Sinn Féin argued to include a reference to the living wage as part of that and on three separate occasions, when amendments were brought to that effect, they were not accepted by the Labour Party. That is regrettable. I am proud to be here as a member of a party that has consistently championed the living wage. This week I received back substantial legislation from the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Advisor, OPLA, which contains some of the elements of this Bill, although it is a broader piece of work. At every opportunity, including in 2015, we sought to amend the Low Pay Commission proposals to include a reference to the living wage. That was done on First Stage, Committee Stage and Report Stage. I will not quote all of what was said at the time but the response from the Minister of State at the time was this:

[The Sinn Féin amendment] seeks to have the Low Pay Commission, in addition to its obligation to issue an annual recommendation on the national minimum hourly rate of pay, be required to make an annual recommendation to the Minister on a living wage. I have spoken in the past, both here and elsewhere, about my support for the concept... However, we need to differentiate between the application of a national statutory minimum wage and the living wage movement, which is a societal movement that would see employers volunteer to pay...what is agreed to be a living wage.

It is very clear that the Labour Party has been on a bit of a journey, which is brilliant, and now recognises that a voluntary system is not going to work. This needs to be legislated for and, as is the case with all legislation of this type, there is always a clause within it allowing an employer who genuinely cannot pay to go to the Labour Court and demonstrate and prove that. That is important.

I note the Minister of State is not opposing the Bill but to echo what has been said previously, not opposing something is not the same as supporting it. I would like to see support from the Government on occasion for legislation coming from the Opposition. The Minister of State says he does not oppose the Bill but he could support it, which would be a much more positive way of framing it. I am very proud to be the party of the living wage. In 2015, we sought to amend what the Labour Party was doing. In 2019 we brought a motion on the living wage. We raised it again in 2020, 2021 and 2022. As I said, my legislation on the matter will be moved very shortly. In the meantime, while we wait for a progressive Government that will actually make a difference to the lives of workers and families, I encourage any person watching this debate to join their trade union. They should find out what union is appropriate to their workplace, join that trade union and bargain at the level of their workplace for a living wage because it represents a threshold of decency below which we should not allow ourselves to go. All over the State, trade unions are bargaining and winning pay rises at the level of the workplace and they are doing so through collective action. They are doing it despite a failure to legislate for collective bargaining - we can discuss that another day - and they are winning.

The Government says the living wage is a grand idea but it is not really going to do much about it. In the absence of a progressive Government that is going to push for it, I encourage people to join their union, get active in their union, make sure their voice is heard at work and make sure they get a fair day's pay for a good day's work. I commend the Members for bringing forward this Bill and welcome the debate on it. It would be much more welcome if we could, just for once, debate legislation the Government does not oppose and hear a Minister say he or she will actually support it.

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