Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for facilitating my contribution to this debate. I was with the Seanad reform implementation group earlier so I am grateful for the chance to speak. I will be brief.

I welcome the Minister and commend her on and thank her for her work in the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment.

I am proud to support the Bill proposed by my colleague, Senator Gavan. He enhances the discourse in the House by championing workers’ rights, and I commend him on doing so. The Bill upholds the ideal of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Many of the views during this debate will have cast aspersions that employers rely on this rate to bring in employees and that we are somehow seeking to undermine SMEs by bringing this Bill forward. I did not hear the debate but if that was the case my response is that if we want to create a society in which our young workers are paid far below a living wage, we are truly in a race to the bottom. We will also leave a swathe of our young workers open to poverty and accept that as an inevitability.

This House should never shirk from its responsibility to eliminate poverty and injustice. Sub-minimum rates of pay and similar measures make poverty a certainty. They do not work to the mutual benefit of employer and employee, only to the benefit of the employer. I have spoken many times previously about how the economic downturn and subsequent austerity decimated workers’ rights, particularly those of young workers. There was a consistent depreciation of young people’s value in the labour market by means of pay cuts, job losses and precarious and casual work, often with institutional support. Alongside that there were drastic cuts to social welfare rates for those under 26 years of age. The stark realities facing young people were either to stay and get caught in a poverty trap or to emigrate. These stark realities still remain. The home to vote movement made our diaspora a live issue for many of us.

The average first wage for a graduate worker has remained stagnant for decades while the cost of living has grown exponentially. We are failing to provide good opportunities for our young people, only opportunities that cost and impoverish them a great deal. Much of this debate will be mired in thinly veiled ageism and the notion that young people are immature and somehow deserve less. The social welfare policy for those under 26 years of age represents that school of thought. That notion has been present in public policy for many years. I hope speakers will address that during this debate.

We should be mindful of that and we should aim to create a society where emigration is a choice, not a necessity, and in which we do not subjugate young people as lesser in their contribution. We should create a fair and just society for them to inherit. The living wage for 2017 was €11.70 per hour. The living wage, while still aspirational, is the lowest bar we should seek to attain. It is based on the lowest wage one can earn to provide a minimum acceptable standard of living. The sub-minimum wage for a person under 18 years of age is €6.41, which is 55% of the income required for a minimum standard of living. We presume all of these workers are dependent on parents, but that is not the case. In fact, it further marginalises the most vulnerable such as those without dependants and those brought up through care systems.

The sub-minimum rates of pay were introduced in 2000 for two distinct reasons. First, the State assumed it would disincentivise early school leavers, but there is no tangible evidence that this has happened. In fact, it would be a far-fetched presumption to suggest that it has. Early school leaving has evidently increased since their introduction. Second, the State felt it should make young people financially competitive in the jobs market and balance out their inexperience. I find this reasoning particularly tragic. While it pre-dated the ill-fated JobBridge by over ten years, its flawed logic resonates with me. We exploit young people, deny them any financial fairness, do not pay them fair dues and then expect some miraculous affirmation of workers’ rights for fair wages to follow.

The point about how this State has failed our young people has been well made. We can continue the exploitation of young people and endorse it by upholding sub-minimum rates of pay, or we can support this Bill today. I encourage the Government to support it.