Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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19. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will report on all meetings with trade unions and other stakeholders in relation to establishing a living wage; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38006/15]

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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The Living Wage concept is grounded in the idea that a person’s wage should be sufficient to maintain a safe, decent standard of living. Of course, it is not isolated from a State’s taxation and social support systems.

So, at an individual level the resources required to achieve a minimum essential standard of living is very dependent on family circumstances and thus the interaction of individual earnings with household income and State-provided supports such as Child Benefit, Family Income Supplement as well as those available in relation to housing, education and health.

In the UK, it is a voluntary code with which some employers, who already pay in excess of the UK national minimum wage, have become associated. The Living Wage concept there draws its strength from the fact that it is a grassroots civil society campaign. At present, around 1,500 separate employers across the country have endorsed the approach. In the UK the Living Wage Foundation has calculated the 2015 UK Living Wage as £7.85 and £9.15 for London.

While I am on record as endorsing the concept of a Living Wage I would differentiate between the application of a mandatory National Minimum Wage and a societal movement that would see employers volunteer to pay what might be considered to be a Living Wage.

The Low Pay Commission, which was established on a statutory basis in July this year, will on an annual basis examine and make recommendations on the national minimum wage, with a view to securing that the national minimum wage, where adjusted, is adjusted incrementally over time having had regard to changes in earnings, productivity, overall competitiveness and the likely impact any adjustment will have on employment and unemployment levels. The Commission presented its first report to me on July 17th in which it recommended an increase of 50 cent per hour to the minimum hourly rate bringing it to €9.15. That increase will come into effect on 1st January next.

I hosted a Living Wage forum in Dublin Castle on 30th September last which was attended by civil society organisations, trade unions and employers where discussion took place on the whole concept of a Living Wage in Ireland and whether and how it might be applied here. The Forum marked an important milestone in the national discourse on the living wage and I was very encouraged that so many employers have approached me in connection with supporting and developing the concept, and that significant employers have committed to pay the living wage. Further work is required on substance and detail about, for example, the proposed methodology behind the calculation of each year's living wage, about the impact on sub-contracting, outsourcing and the supply chain, about the cost of compliance in a business where affordability is a pressing concern and where adoption of the living wage would be a real and substantial commitment. The Tánaiste announced at the Forum that her Department would make €40,000 available to fund the next phase of work on the Living Wage Campaign.