Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I add my condolences to those offered to the family of Christy Dignam, as Deputy Smith did. Christy was a legend in music and a beautiful singer. He was a working-class hero and I suspect his songs will be sung for a long time, if not forever. He will be greatly missed but his legacy will live on.

It would probably surprise many people that we have a situation where there is such a thing as a sub-minimum wage. The fact is the minimum wage, which is now €11.30, is not a liveable income, even for those who get it, when the absolutely shocking cost-of-living, the accommodation and housing crisis, the extortionate levels of rents and house prices, and the shocking increases we have seen in energy prices and the price of food are considered. Across the board, the cost of living over the past two years means even the minimum wage itself is far short of an acceptable income for working people. In reality, it leaves 150,000 people who have to exist on this wage as the working poor. In and of itself, that is unacceptable and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. We should be moving immediately to the introduction of a living wage, at least to the €13.10 that is established as a living wage. As Deputy Smith said, however, we believe we need to go further. In this day and age, and given the cost-of-living crisis and the cost of accommodation and housing for people, we should be talking about at least €15.

The idea that, against the background of an already shockingly inadequate minimum, people aged 19, 18 or under 18 are paid less than this pathetic minimum wage is shocking, and something I suspect most people do not know about. We are keen to highlight it because anybody who becomes aware of this says it is an absolute outrage that if somebody is 19, they get €10.17 an hour rather than €11.30, if they are 18, they get €9.04 and, worst of all, if they are under 18, they get €7.91. It is absolutely shocking. It violates the basic principle that there should be equal pay for equal work. That is a basic principle. I strongly suspect we are violating the human rights of young people in expecting them to work for a lesser amount of pay for doing the same work as people who simply happen to be older than them and get paid more on the basis of age. It is basic discrimination and it is insulting to young people for the work they do.

The suggestion or narrative we hear from those who try to defend the status quo, that somehow young people do not really need to be paid the same or that it is just pocket money, again just shows a complete lack of awareness and understanding of the realities young people face. As Mr. Jonathan Hogan of the Mandate trade union pointed out earlier this year in response to that kind of narrative, the reality is that many young people's earnings and income are crucial to their family's income in helping what are often low-income families to pay the bills, including rent. It even goes beyond that, as representatives of the students' union movement and the secondary schools students' union have stated. I welcome many of those groups to the Gallery. I make the Minister of State aware that many people are present who have an interest in this Bill, are supporting it and, indeed, have been independently campaigning on this issue even before we brought the Bill to the House. I welcome representatives of Mandate, University College Dublin Students' Union, UCDSU, the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, the Irish Second-Level Students Union, ISSU, all of which support the Bill, as well as the Unite trade union and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, youth committee. We were also joined by representatives of Sinn Féin at this morning's protest, along with members of the National Youth Council of Ireland and many others. I hope I have not left anybody out in all that. I thank them for their support and campaigning on this issue.

As Ms Molly Greenough, who I think is in the Gallery, pointed out, when she was asked about this:

UCDSU wants to see an immediate end to the exploitation of young workers under the age of 20. This is a form of discrimination that just compounds things for students working long hours just to put themselves through college. Abolishing sub-minimum wage[s] ... for workers under 20 is only fair.

That is absolutely true. Students are struggling at present. They are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. Rents are unaffordable and students are being hit disproportionately with the cost-of-living crisis, rising food prices, the rising cost of energy and all the other cost-of-living increases that have hit ordinary working people and young people over the past two years in particular.

It is worth saying that in many of the areas where younger people work and have to put up with these discriminatory levels of pay, we have also seen, as part of a more general phenomenon during the cost-of-living crisis, massive profits being made in many cases, for example, by the big supermarket chains. The cost-of-living crisis has not been a lose-lose situation for everybody in this country. The reality is that while workers have lost huge amounts of their income in real terms because of cost-of-living increases and are being crucified with those increases, we have seen profits shoot up for many of the big corporations, many of the supermarket chains and so on. What we are actually seeing with the cost-of-living crisis is a redistribution of wealth in favour of big business at the expense of working people. Young people, in this case, are disproportionately suffering those cost-of-living increases.

I note that at the national economic dialogue, the Taoiseach identified and highlighted the concern about low pay and acknowledged the huge hit that working people have taken in their income because of the cost-of-living crisis. Therefore, I am interested to see what the Government will say to this Bill. Is it going to let it pass? There is absolutely no justification for not eliminating this discrimination and ensuring that young workers are treated with respect and at least given access to the minimum wage, which, as we said, is already shockingly inadequate, and even more so considering the labour shortages we are now suffering in this country.

In almost every area, we are seeing the unprecedented phenomenon of advertisements appearing all over the country saying workers are wanted for this and that. There are shortages in every area of the economy. I have not seen the latest Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures on immigration but I suspect we will see a significant increase in the number of young people leaving, which was already running at about 45,000 to 50,000 people over recent years. I suspect, as we see the new figures come in, we will see that many more young people are leaving.

Yet, we need those young people to stay. The Government needs to understand they have to be encouraged to stay, and that means showing them some respect and giving them some prospect that the incomes they will earn will allow them to be able to put a roof over their head, live a decent and dignified life and allow them to survive in a decent and dignified way when they are trying to go through education. There is no justification for the Government opposing this Bill. Indeed, it seems it is an absolute obligation on this Government to support the passage of this Bill and ensure it is brought into law as quickly as possible as part of a more general increase in wages and income for workers in this country to match the cost-of-living crisis people are facing.

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