Joe O'Reilly urges equal minimum wage for apprentices

Thank you. At the outset, can I welcome my colleague Minister Dhillon to the House and recognise the great work he does in his department and how proactive he is. I look forward to hearing his views on this matter later. I also wanted the outset to congratulate Senator Cosco and her colleague on introducing the legislation. It is a great thing that you have initiated this debate here. I want to say that I personally believe in principle and I am going to commend to the Minister and indeed will be commending another for us to my party that we have to make this a position that we want to achieve, that we have to achieve the minimum wage for all workers, irrespective of age and of status, etc. Because by and large they do the same work and I will come back to all that. There are a few interesting things. When I attended the briefing on this today and I am sorry I was distracted with another matter there and I am just getting my notes but I attended a briefing on this today and there are a few interesting statistics on this and I would be interested in the Minister's response to them as well. Already roughly five out of six employers already paid the minimum wage to all the workers. It is a very small section who do not and that is a relevant statistic. Now of course the question arises and I had calls today myself on this. For some employers it could be very challenging but my contention Minister is that we will have to find ways of supporting those employers otherwise and we did go some journey towards that with the VAT in the budget, the VAT rates in the budget, the world's initiatives during COVID around rates, etc. And there will have to be ways of dealing with, nobody wants to put employers out of business and one has to recognise and I would be the first because I do live in the real world and I do meet a lot of people and I would be the first to recognise that this is challenging for particular employers and in those instances I think strategies have to be devised as part of the solution. But the solution for those employers is not to put them into a different category of wage rates to the general and they should be put into tandem with the other employers who are already paying it. So that is a very important point that I would want to make at the outset and I think that really is a critical matter. Now so I think that argument holds up very strongly that we recognise the very small and there will be small number of employers who live in difficulty and that we support them otherwise. I think the next thing that's very valid and it has been met on the other side of the house here is that children are no longer, our young people are no longer in the position where it was an important disincentive for leaving school. Attitudes cultural, attitudes values have changed fundamentally in society in this regard and thank god that they've changed and I think we have to recognise that and that's a kind of an unnecessary canard at this stage. Now the big issue that I think really jumps out at me not just at the briefing that I attended today but on common sense and observation and that is the whole question around apprenticeship and this is a very critical issue. If we need according to experts and you would have much more knowledge in this sphere, Minister and you might comment on this, my understanding is that by 2030 we will need 80,000 more craft workers to achieve our infrastructural ambitions, to achieve our housing ambitions and if that's to be the case well then we have to encourage apprenticeship and we can't, it's no logic in saying to young people oh you should become apprentices. There's nothing very glamorous of getting up at six o'clock in the morning to go in a van to Dublin so yeah and yet it is a wonderful thing to do an apprenticeship to achieve a trade but I think you have to make it attractive for apprentices and I think there is no way out of paying them. So quite apart from a moral position on this and an ethical position that everyone is equal under the law and equal under God and equal in society, apart from that ethical position there's a more economic compulsion or an economic need to actually do this because we do need to attract apprentices, we do need to train up electricians, craftspeople right across the whole range of people. So those are the arguments and I'm interested in your response Minister and I think basically and the last thing on this is of course all work is equally valuable and it is the case as Senator Trolley did say that my understanding that if somebody goes into catering or whatever they go into that they fundamentally do the same work from day one it will there will be a short learning curve but they're fundamentally doing the same work. My good colleague and friend Senator Crowe would have much more expertise in this area but it's my understanding that they basically do the same. I look forward to your response Minister I think it's something that we should be committed to achieving and to put into processes to get it done. Thank you.