Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I wish everyone today a happy May Day. Many workers across the State are looking forward to a day off on Monday; a public holiday introduced by the Labour Party to mark International Workers' Day. It is important we mark this day. Its purpose is more than just celebrating the progress made on workers' rights in the past 100 years because May Day is also when we shine a light on the continued exploitation, poverty and inequality experienced by far too many people still.

Today, we think of all those working families struggling to pay their bills. We heard only yesterday a spike in food prices last month has pushed our annual inflation rate to 2% and, more and more, people are struggling to makes ends meet in a cost-of-living crisis. This is partly why there has been such uproar about the outrageous almost half a million euro salary proposed for Fianna Fáil's housing maverick; a housing oligarch or a housing tsar with a Russian oligarch price tag. W e might call it a "fixer-in-chief" or even "a fixer with a nixer" and what an extraordinary nixer this is. It is interesting to hear the Tánaiste and Fine Gael colleagues distancing themselves from this. Indeed, people will be glad to hear he has just said no decision has been made yet on how to populate this new office. When households are stretched, people need reassurance from Government. On the issue of reassurance, the Tánaiste needs to give workers a reprieve on low pay. Those who are on low pay need to have hope for the future.

This year marks 25 years since the introduction of the minimum wage. It is ten years since Labour, and my colleague, Deputy Nash, established the Low Pay Commission with the support of the Tánaiste's party, Fine Gael, and the commission has done a good job. Thanks to its evidence-based approach, we have seen nine successive increases in the minimum wage so that each year, those on the lowest salaries have been given more money in their pockets to pay for basic necessities and to put aside for the future. Our common goal should e to ensure workers in this country are not just living to work because they must spend every waking hour toiling to cover the cost, but that they are able to work to live.

Those minimum wage increases would not have happened without the Low Pay Commission. They would not have happened were the Tánaiste's party left to its own devices and I say that not to cause offence. In fact, Fine Gael's recent record in workers' rights is stronger than his partners in Fianna Fáil. At the first sniff of a previous economic downturn, Fianna Fáil leapt to cut the minimum wage, shamefully, by €1.

The Government must do more now. Lowest paid workers in Ireland were promised a living wage by 2026, calculated at €14.75 per hour, a floor which no one should fall beneath. Disappointingly, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Burke, has moved the goalposts, shifting that deadline again, this time to 2029. He cited the need to take account of competitiveness issues but that is a red herring. The Low Pay Commission is already required by law to take competitiveness into account under section 6 of the Act. Instead of trying to pin competitiveness issues on the lowest paid workers in the State, will the Tánaiste commit to honouring the Low Pay Commission's approach-----

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