Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On foot of our debate yesterday evening regarding our fire services, the Government's amendment is disappointing. We heard about our firefighters. Their hourly rate equates to 90 cent an hour, but I am not sure if that point was made, or if it was, the Government must have heard it but been deaf to it, and this is similar. I have been working since I was 12, and I have no shame in saying that. It was not because I was thrown out of my family and had to work or anything like that. They were just different times. I had a job in our local shop, and I will say this for my employer. It was the best job I have had in my entire life. I was treated in the same way as those who were in full-time employment. I was paid the same hourly rate and I paid my dividends through hard work.

As Deputy Catherine Murphy noted, it is about the atmosphere of a workplace. How can someone who is behind a bar at midnight, who has been working for hours to make ends meet for themselves, never mind trying to subsidise a family, be exploited in that the 21-year-old working beside them is on the minimum wage at the very least? Why would someone be exploited in that way? If it were a man and a woman we were talking about, that would not even be tolerated as conversation.

The motion is timely, and as for the Government’s amendment, I ask the Minister of State please to see sense. There are people in the Gallery who will be making decisions on our behalf as we get older, and if they were to bring forward something like this, on an ageist basis, for the older population, we would be jumping up and down. The amendment needs to be withdrawn. Based on the European average and what is happening, we should have equal pay for equal work. Employers may be deterred from taking on younger people, but I think we can safely say that at a time when we are almost at full employment, or at least that is what we hear every day, they will be more than glad to get them and to pay them. I have been very lucky throughout my working life in that I have never been exploited, but that does not mean there are not cases for which we need to legislate, but we should do so in a positive manner. We should not be the ones creating the exploitative circumstances. That is why the amendment needs to be withdrawn, and we should take the motion as it stands on board. Employers, in a practical, common-sense approach, will make their decision based on equal pay for equal work, and I do not think any more than that. We do not want to demonise anybody, but we certainly do not want to exploit our young people.

I know plenty of people of 16 years of age who have to go out to work and cannot survive on our apprenticeship programmes. That was mentioned earlier by another Deputy, but it is something the Minister of State needs to look at. We need to get apprenticeships under way. We are way behind the curve of the European average in respect of our young people taking up apprenticeships. We need them badly but they are not being encouraged and, as a matter of fact, they are being greatly deterred. The students who are sitting in the Gallery may well be college students, but we should be paying equal value to apprenticeship programmes, given that is what our environment of today dictates. This is true especially for anybody who is not academically brilliant, such as me. I left school at 14, and I did not suffer the consequences because my mindset was that, whether you think you can or cannot, you are correct, and we do not have enough of that today.

The simple stuff such as we are now debating deters and discourages people. As Deputy Murphy said, it is demoralising. It does not matter what age a person is. If they are working, they are working, and if they are putting in hours, they should be paid the same hourly rate as the colleague beside them. Of course, when a person moves on to a life career, that will change, but it should not be the case for anybody aged between 16 and 20.

There should be no difference whatsoever in paying the minimum wage to somebody who is working at that stage. I do not need to labour the point; many of my colleagues have put it forward. I want the Minister to think seriously about this based on what we debated yesterday evening about the fire service. We need to encourage people and we have to have a level playing field. As I said, being near full employment, we have to ensure we have, not only a moral compass and social justice about this, but we have to have a good feeling about the people we elect working in our favour. That is why I ask the Minister again to withdraw his amendment.

See this speech in context