David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will not go over all that ground again, but essentially, amendment No. 20 would bring in all the issues I talked about earlier regarding the relationship between low pay and social welfare, child care, public services, health, housing and so on. It is to look at social policy as well as economic policy. We have made those arguments fairly substantially already.

The intention of amendment No. 21 is not at all to call into question the people who sit on the Low Pay Commission. There are very good people on it and I commend the Minister of State for ensuring there were trade union representatives as well. There were a number of omissions, though, which are not all covered in this. We had some discussion on a document I am working on at the moment for the committee on low pay and a living wage, so there will be an Oireachtas document on a living wage, which will look at those broader issues that the Minister of State talked about earlier. There was some disquiet from the Small Firms Association that it was not represented on the Low Pay Commission, but I raised with the chairman designate when he came before the committee the issue of why there was nobody who was actually on low pay on the commission. I know there are union representatives and others who represent people on low pay, but because it is looking at the issue of low pay, it would be useful to have workers who are, or have been, in low-paid jobs to offer an opinion, because they have lived it. They understand it. They know what it is like. They know what the issues are and what the challenges are. The amendment refers to "3 low paid workers who, in the opinion of the Minister" - it is entirely at the Minister's discretion to choose who they are - "have a first-hand understanding of the impact of low pay for vulnerable workers, particularly in relation to their ability to access social goods and life chances, and of its impact on a family’s overall standard of living and socio-economic wellbeing."