Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is worth reminding the House that the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 provides for the national minimum wage only. It is quite restricted in terms of how it views the minimum wage. That Act sets out provisions for reviewing the minimum wage and the mechanisms available for those purposes. When this Bill is enacted, it will give the commission a duty to assist as many low-paid workers as is reasonably practicable and to set a rate that is fair, sustainable and progressively increased over time. The remit of the proposed Low Pay Commission is much wider than Sinn Féin Senators and others in this House would readily admit. It is unfortunate that this has been glossed over repeatedly. The view being taken is that if something is repeated enough times, people will start to believe it. The legislation says something entirely different. The practice of the Low Pay Commission will be entirely different as well. I have every confidence that the Low Pay Commission, in addition to examining the rate of the national minimum wage each year, will do a large degree of additional work which will focus on the interaction between low pay and the tax and social welfare systems. It would be pointless to do otherwise.

Some of those who spoke on Second and Committee Stages deliberately failed to recognise a number of distinctions between the Irish and British systems.We looked very closely at the British model, its establishment of a low pay commission, what it has achieved, the function it has in British society as a key institution and some of the experiences it has had in recent years. However, Ireland is very different from the UK on a range of fronts. For example, we have reintroduced a joint labour committee system to assist people in vulnerable sectors of our economy but this is a distant memory in the UK. At the moment work is being carried out involving employers, trade unions and the Labour Court on two separate joint labour committees, one for the contract cleaning industry, which is a very vulnerable industry, and one for the security industry. We hope to make significant progress on them in the next couple of months.

We are also reintroducing the registered employment agreement system and sectoral employment order system, which they do not have in the UK. They are two distinct differences of which we need to be mindful when we discuss the low pay commission, issues to do with low pay and how we treat people working in sectors where they can often be exposed. The taxation system in this country is designed to favour those on low and middle incomes and the Government's policy is very clear. Compared to this time in 2011, 440,000 fewer are paying the universal social charge and, after the next budget, we will have a significant number in addition who will not be paying the charge. People on low and middle incomes, in particular, are hit by this charge.

The purpose of the Bill is to provide for necessary amendments to the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 to provide for the establishment of the low pay commission. The principal function will be to examine, on an annual basis, the rate of the national minimum wage and to make recommendations to Government. Where the national minimum wage is to be adjusted, it will be adjusted incrementally over time having regard to changes in earnings, productivity, overall competitiveness and the likely impact any adjustment would have on employment and unemployment levels.

This Bill replaces the previous means by which the national minimum wage could be set and replaces it with an annual analysis and recommendations by the low pay commission. Those means were set out in sections 11 to 13, inclusive, of the National Minimum Wage Act 2000, which are now replaced by section 9 of this Bill. Clearly, the role of the low pay commission is firmly set within the national minimum wage legislation of the State. This does not mean, however, that the remit of the low pay commission is a narrow one. As I have previously stated, the commission is certainly about much more than setting the rate of the national minimum wage or making recommendations on the minimum wage.

Section 5 also provides that the commission may be requested by the Minister to examine and report on matters relating generally to the functions of the commission under the Act. That request will be made not later than two months after the start of each year, apart from this year, and will be part of that year's work programme of the commission. We have introduced a measure in the legislation which will enable me, in this first year of the establishment of the low pay commission, to request that it carry out work in the next few months on issues of concern to Government and which have been raised in both Houses in recent times. This allows me and future Ministers to ask the low pay commission each year to do other work to address areas about which we are all concerned and to advise the Government in an expert and evidence-based way about the best approaches to take to combat low pay. For these reasons, I cannot accept the Senators' amendments.