Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to briefly raise two matters today. First, I remind people that the National Minimum Wage (Protection of Employee Tips) Bill 2017 is to be debated this evening at 6 p.m. I express my gratitude to people across all parties who have offered expressions of support today, and I appeal for their support again this evening to get this very simple but important Bill through to Report Stage. We are very happy to work as constructively as possible with the Government and all parties on Report Stage to ensure this Bill gets through. It will make a real difference to people in precarious work and on low pay. I wish to highlight that. I am looking forward to it.

I also wish to highlight a report that was published yesterday. It has already received a great deal of support but I recommend that everyone reads, it regardless of party. I refer to Cherishing All Equally, the 2019 report of the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC. It is a report on inequality in Europe and Ireland. I will mention a couple of statistics and call for a debate on the topic. Some 24% of Irish people are at risk of poverty. That is quite a shocking statistic. This is only surpassed by eastern European states. One in every four children in Ireland is at risk of poverty. We are now an outlier in Europe for low pay. The bottom 40% of Irish workers take home a 22% share of national income, while the top 10% take 25%.