Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. On the budget and budgetary considerations, the main question is whether there is a coherent strategy to address the growth of inequality that we witnessed over the last number of decades. It is not just over the last number of austerity budgets that we have witnessed this. Earlier this afternoon, the Minister of State said the rate of job creation is one of the fastest in Europe. We heard a lot about the wave of new jobs that are being created and an increase in the number of those in employment since the employment crisis hit originally. Despite a minor increase in the numbers employed in some counties, we do know from the quarterly national household survey that the labour force has declined in some of those counties. Limited jobs growth, by and large, has been restricted to Dublin and other urban centres. This is deepening a well-entrenched two-tier economy.

There is a growth in high-skill, high-paid jobs but loss of mid-pay jobs in manufacturing. Service sector jobs are growing but new sectors of employment are characterised by low pay and low job security. Young people are in low-paid and precarious employment. According to a number of surveys, they are leaving Ireland because they cannot get their footing in a career. I want to stress the word "career". They do not see prospects for themselves here and that is why they are flocking to other countries.

It is important to note, in the context of the increase in the employment figures, that low pay is becoming a serious problem. One in five workers earns below the living age of €11.45 per hour. To contextualise the living wage, it is 14% of a current Minister's salary. According to recent Social Justice Ireland data, 16% of adults who have an income below the poverty line are actually employed. We know from the recent OECD employment outlook 2014, that Ireland has the second highest percentage of low paying jobs among OECD countries. The prevalence of low pay will undermine future recovery. It will lead to unstable growth and increase costs for the State in transfer payments. Given this inequality, I ask the Minister of State to outline what the Government is doing to counteract this.

The Minister of State also said recovery would not be felt until everyone had a job or more money in their pockets. Those were some of the measures he mentioned. There are also 28,000 fewer young people in employment since this Government took office. A Red C poll commissioned by the National Youth Council of Ireland released recently found that four in ten young people are struggling to make ends meet as a result of welfare cuts. The justification put forward for those cuts originally was that they would incentivise young people to take up education, training or work opportunities. That argument is undermined by the fact that various social welfare payments and training allowances to young people under 25 years of age have been cut in recent budgets. As someone from the generation which has since adulthood known nothing but austerity, I am extremely disappointed that the weekly rate of €188 for all young people on education, training and work experience programmes is not being restored.