Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to focus on pay discrimination, which is being exposed on a daily basis. I want the Leader to take note of it and to see if a debate can be organised on the matter. Pay discrimination has evolved since 2009 as a result of FEMPI and across this city, booming businesses, particularly in the retail industry and in pubs and hotels, are still discriminating against young people. There are four different categories of wages for people under the age of 20 and none of them is at the level of the minimum wage. It is time the Government focused on treating everybody equally. Everybody who can go out and do a day's work should be treated the same, whether they are young, old, male or female.

On another issue dear to my heart, a report in today's Irish Independentis headed "Coveney's bid to hike councillors' pay fails". Can the Leader give us some clarity on that? It seems to come from within his own party. Last week, it was successfully leaked by Fine Gael that the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, was going to give a €1,000 increase to councillors in their salary and €2,500 in their expenses. On Friday last week, not on the road to Damascus but the road to Bantry, the Minister changed his mind and by the time he got to Bantry to the councillors' conference, he was not making any announcement. He wanted to wait to see what was happening. Today in the Irish Independentwe are told by a reputable reporter that he has been stopped by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and that there will be no increase for councillors, now or in the budget. I was a councillor for many years, as many in this room were, and they are not the country's favourite people but they do a very important job. They are currently paid approximately €350 per week. The rise in their wages was to be €20 per week which, when tax was taken off, would amount to €10. Across the public sector, and rightly so, those who have been deprived of increases since 2008 are putting forward a case for pay increases but, according to today's article, the Minister cannot do anything for councillors because gardaí have decided they want to make a claim. The connection between gardaí and councillors is beyond me. Nurses and teachers want to make a claim, as does everybody who was denied an increase, but Deputy Coveney is using the action of the gardaí to prevent councillors from getting a wage increase. The councillors of this country have been led up the garden path for long enough.

I ask the cross-party group, of which Senator McFadden is chair, for two things. First, I call for a meeting of that group to be convened to seek an urgent meeting with the Minister. Second, I ask the Leader give clarity to this story. Maybe it is being pumped up in order that the result can be delivered in the end but it is not amusing any councillors across the country this morning.