Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Paul Murphy and People Before Profit on bringing forward this Bill. It has always struck me as completely and utterly unfair that young workers, those under the age of 20, have a lower rate of the minimum wage. A 19-year-old, for example, will earn just 90% of the minimum wage. An 18-year-old will only earn 80% of the minimum wage and a 17-year-old will receive just 70% of the minimum wage, which works out as €7.91 per hour. How has this situation been allowed to persist for as long as it has?

On a related point, it was not so long ago that we had a substantial report from the Commission on Pensions. It stressed the need to promote and protect intergenerational equity. This means not only fairness within generations but between different generations. That was obviously in the context of planning for workers' retirements. Contrast that report's stated aim with the very real pay inequality which persists for young workers today. Where is the intergenerational equity for those people? I cannot see it and I am sure the Minister of State cannot see it either. It has been five years since Sinn Féin first introduced legislation to end this unequal and discriminatory practice. These exploitative sub-minimum wage pay rates have now been ended in the likes of Germany, Spain, Belgium and Canada. The list goes on.

The Minister of State will have seen that the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, recently produced its housing report at an event in Dublin City University, DCU. It stated that students are paying an average of €750 for rent every month. Imagine an 18-year-old who has just entered college. The student needs to work to cover rent but obviously cannot work a standard 40-hour work because he or she needs to attend class and tutorials, sit examinations, complete assignments and prepare, etc. Let us assume the student works half that amount. This 18-year-old could be earning €9.04 per hour. After one month, he or she would have earned just over €720, which is not even enough to cover the average student rent. The student would still have an average shortfall of €30. What should such students do? Should they be starting to busk on Eyre Square or Grafton Street to allow them to cover their rents?

Let us not forget our apprentices who are not even covered by the national minimum wage legislation, discriminatory as it is. The late author Cormac McCarthy, who sadly passed away yesterday, wrote the novel No Country for Old Men. This Government seems determined to write the sequel, "no country for young people".

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