Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Is it not right that any person who works all the hours that God sends should be entitled to experience an acceptable standard of living? If one thinks about it for more than three minutes, even having a minimum wage is an insult to any employee. The value I place on someone's work is reflected in my choice to pay that person the bare minimum that I can.

As other Senators have said, we need to introduce a living wage that would see the 130,000 workers who currently earn that minimum wage increase their pay to €12.30 per hour. That is the new living wage, announced today by the living wage technical group. That is a rise of 40 cent on last year, driven almost entirely by the housing crisis.

I do not think Fine Gael believes in financial security or a better standard of living for low-paid workers because it could have spent €35 million and introduced the living wage for public sector and Civil Service workers in the most recent budget but it did not. Instead it chose to squander €350 million on income tax cuts that would have been available to the State.

Fianna Fáil also mentioned the living wage today but it is not much better. It reduced the minimum wage by €1 to €7.65 in 2010 when in government alongside the Green Party.

I will finish by quoting some figures. Some 70% of employees on the minimum wage are women, half of those on the minimum wage are young people, and 25% of workers who earn the minimum wage were born overseas. If we are serious about creating an equal society, we should raise living standards for these 130,000 people. I remind Members that the sole member of staff each Senator has starts on an annual salary of €23,000, which is almost €8,000 below the living wage.