Rose Conway-Walsh Accuses Government of Backtracking on Living Wage

Minister, your government made commitments on introducing the living wage, on enhancing paid sick leave entitlements, on abolishing the sub-minimum youth rates of pay, on increasing the minimal annual remuneration for employment permits and pension auto-enrolment. You have reneged on all of these progressive measures. I know you will say, Minister, that these are just delayed, but the language used is postponement, but without concrete timeframes, workers fear that delay really means deny. Thank you, Deputy. Minister. Go raibh maith agad Laskan Córla. Just in relation to Deputy Conway's question, the Government is committed to promoting a positive working conditions in Ireland and ensuring access to quality jobs. However, it is important to maintain a regulatory environment to allow businesses to remain viable and, indeed, to thrive. The Programme for Government outlines a strong forward-looking enterprise and fiscal framework prioritising economic and employment growth. The Deputy will be aware that excessive improvements to worker rights have been implemented in recent years, including new legislation on the tips and gratuities, including the right to work to request remote working, as well as the new public holidays to celebrate St Bridges Day. Legislation for employer paid statutory sick leave banning zero-hour contracts, enhancing the protection of employees facing collective redundancies due to insolvencies, as well as substantial increases to the national minimum wage. Between 2020 and 2025, the minimum wage has increased from 10.10 to 13.50, representing a nominal increase of 33 per cent. The Employers' Permits Act of 2024 updated the employment permit system, introducing a new seasonal employment permit which has been piloted this year. 2025 will also see the expansion of the regime to reduce the gender pay. The Employment Contractual Retirement Age Bill 2025 was published in April of this year and was successfully completed second stage in the Dáil on Tuesday 8 April. The bill, once enacted, will deliver new employment rights, allowing but in no way compelling an employee to sustain employment until the age of 66. The sectorial employment order construction sector 2024 comes into effect on 1 August 2025 to reflect the higher rates of pay for craft and general construction workers' pay will increase by 3.4 per cent in August 2025 and again by 3.2 per cent in August 2026. Thank you. Minister, what I wanted was a firm commitment that you would end the onslaught on ordinary workers and you haven't provided me with that. For workers on the minimum wage, looking forward to the living wage as was committed to, when they see then in the past week a wage of 430,000 announced or talked about for a housing czar to replace the housing minister, like it just doesn't sit with people who are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. The workers here did not cause the global uncertainty and they cannot be made scapegoats for government failures. The government cannot use this uncertainty around tariffs as an excuse to roll back on promises to workers. So backtracking on the minimum wage commitments doesn't make economic sense. The sectors that rely heavily on the minimum wage workers by and large are not exporters but rather trade domestically. Thank you, Deputy. I appreciate where you are coming from in relation to what you have raised. However, government is very conscious in relation to the cost of doing business, the increases to the minimum wage over the last number of years. Since 2022, we have seen a 32 per cent increase to the current rate of 13.50. However, government is very much committed to continuing to increase the minimum wage. However, over a longer period, we have sought approval and has been granted to extend the living wage out to 2029. But once the Low Pay Commission's report comes before us this July, we will take the recommendations on board. I think this government is committed to ensuring that we have protection for workers, that they deserve fair wages and also this previous government and Fine Gael introduced the statutory sick pay leave. Again, that was the first of its kind to protect workers on leave, but also it will maintain at its current rate of five days. Further to that, illness benefit will kick in on day six and that will provide additional protection. However, as I said in my earlier contribution, we have committed to protecting workers through many, many pieces of legislation, as I referenced earlier, and we will continue to support workers, while also striking the balance to ensure businesses remain viable. Thank you very much. Minister, going after workers in these sectors will not address our international competitiveness, nor will it help sectors on the frontline deal with the impact of tariffs. All we will do is to leave ordinary workers worse off in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Now, we have one of the highest rates of low pay in the EU, and one in five workers are low paid. A figure has remained relatively unchanged after decades of broken promises from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Yesterday, we saw the ESRI published research it undertook on behalf of the Low Pay Commission. The findings of this research show that percentage of minimum wage jobs being advertised is growing. In 2024, 15 per cent of all hourly paid job vacancies are minimum wage jobs. There is a huge variation in the incidence of minimum wage employment across the state. In Dublin, approximately 7 per cent of jobs advertised were for minimum wage workers, and in Donegal, that figure was 20 per cent, meaning that in real terms, workers in Donegal and the West earn less. This obviously has a knock-on effect across the regional economy. Minister, your government's failure to introduce a living wage leaves low paid workers extremely vulnerable. I would say to you there are many ways to support businesses, but this is not one of the ways. We are on a race to the bottom here. Deputy, just to clarify, this government is committed to the introduction of the living wage, and that will happen over an extended period. We are committed again to taking the recommendations from the Low Pay Commission on board once we receive their report, and that will form the discussions in preparation for the budget later this year. Indeed, our department takes very seriously the conditions of workers, and we are guided by evidence. Our decisions are based on facts, and we have engaged with ERSI, the IGES, in detailed research with key stakeholders, because we know across some of the vulnerable sectors in hospitality and food services and retail, that there is real cost pressures around labour, around regulatory burden, around energy costs, and we want to protect the viability of these businesses, and also protecting the livelihoods of those who are employed, because these sectors account for over 70 per cent of all jobs across the country, and we need to protect them and ensure that it's done in a very responsible manner.