Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What I wanted was a firm commitment that the onslaught on ordinary workers would be ended. The Minister of State has not provided me with that. Workers on the minimum wage are looking forward to the living wage, as was committed to. When they hear, in the past week, a wage of €430,000 talked about for a housing tsar to replace the housing Minister, it just does not sit right with people who are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. The workers here did not cause the global uncertainty and they cannot be made scapegoats for Government failures. The Government cannot use the uncertainty about tariffs as an excuse to row back on promises to workers. Backtracking on the minimum wage commitments does not make economic sense. The sectors that rely heavily on the minimum wage workers are, by and large, not exporters but rather trade domestically.

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