Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

It is a shame that the Minister is not here. I hope he is listening. I do not know whether he or the Minister of State is doing the sum-up and reply at the end. I have some questions for him.

This morning, I asked what interactions the Minister had with Michael O'Leary, who launched the former's election campaign, since taking office. I have just received the written answer, and the interesting thing is it states he has had no "official" interaction with him, which raises some eyebrows. I listened back to the tape of our engagement earlier and the Minister said he had no interaction with Michael O'Leary "in connection with any of my work". That leaves a very big question for me about whether that means he has met him unofficially and is covering it up. We know that Fine Gael and this Government have form on this. Michael O'Leary had a secret private dinner with Paschal Donohoe in February 2022 when the latter was Minister for Finance. It was not disclosed under lobbying laws and was not listed in the Minister's diary. Apparently, Fine Gael Ministers and Michael O'Leary just enjoy one another's company. Companies as well, perhaps. The reason this is relevant is Michael O'Leary lauded Peter Burke as the man who had to be in to "get shit done" on behalf of enterprise. This Government has pushed a pro-Michael O'Leary and pro-big business agenda, accelerated in the past number of weeks, at the expense of workers.

I also asked the Minister this morning, and the Taoiseach later on, about the Government's scandalous decision to abandon the abolition of sub-minimum wages for young workers despite the clear recommendation of the Low Pay Commission that they be abolished. The Minister's excuse was that, if young workers were not paid less than the minimum wage, they might leave school early. It is apparently out of concern for their future prospects that caring bosses pay young workers as little as €9.45 an hour for doing the exact same work as anybody else. If they got €13.50 an hour, they would drop out of school, apparently. That excuse was examined and addressed by the Low Pay Commission and dismissed.

5 o’clock

Another excuse we heard from ISME at the Oireachtas hearings last year was that:

... to give a 16-year-old an adult wage without clear guidance and support, which is not an employer's job creates poor money habits. They usually lack bills and expenses, and may favour gratification before learning how to budget, save and create sustainable spending habits.

Therefore, if they got €13.50 an hour, they would blow it all on gratification, heaven forbid. Bosses are now concerned about young workers moral development as well.

A third excuse was that employers would not employ as many young people if they had to pay them the full minimum wage and - I am not making this up - that that would be bad for youth mental health. So we have early school leaving, self-gratification and mental health all put forward as excuses for keeping sub-minimum wages. Of course there is no evidence for any of this. These excuses are, to put it plainly, complete nonsense. They are all excuses that the Low Pay Commission examined. The Low Pay Commission commissioned the ESRI to do a report and went through each of these excuses, knocked them down and said there was no basis for this based on international evidence. For example, the UK used to have a lower rate of minimum wage for those under 25. That was abolished and it had zero impact in terms of these measures.

The reason the Government and employers are tying themselves up in knots to come up with ridiculous excuses for keeping sub-minimum wage rates is that the EU directive on adequate minimum wages requires sub-minimum rates to be "in pursuit of a legitimate aim". Under EU law - the Low Pay Commission is clear on this - reducing business costs is not a legitimate aim. The problem is that the Tánaiste must not have got this memo because when I asked him about it during Leaders' Questions earlier, he said the quiet part out loud. He gave an answer for keeping sub-minimum wages that was all about reducing business costs. That is an illegal justification and the Tánaiste should withdraw it. In February, the Minister of State said the Government would decide on this after the economic impact assessment. Now it does not even have an economic impact assessment and it is already withdrawing it. It should stop the excuses and set a date for abolishing sub-minimum rates.

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