Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“It is precisely about us having time to ask questions about issues such as the housing crisis, appropriate education places for children with additional needs and neutrality because we have a Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Lowry Government that is determined to ram through a whole series of unpopular measures. That is fundamentally why they are undermining the ability of the Opposition to hold the Government to account. They want to get rid of neutrality. The Minister of State’s own party leader said the triple lock is at the very core of our neutrality. The Government knows that this is going to be deeply unpopular and, therefore, is halving the time of Taoiseach’s Questions, cutting Private Members’ time and time for the Order of Business in order to stop the voice of Opposition being heard in here so that it can be rammed through.”
“One of the most cynical arguments we have heard in relation to the speaking time row in the past 24 hours has been the suggestion that the Opposition is wasting time on this unimportant thing when there are very important issues happening like the housing crisis, Trump and so forth. Commentators, who have cheered on every step of the way while the Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, made developers and landlords rich and worsened the housing crisis, now profess to care about the housing crisis and that we should be debating it. The speaking time row is precisely about our ability as an Opposition to hold the Government to account.”
“The State should not be able to just offload its responsibility onto somebody, or anybody, else rather than providing services that should be provided as a right. From the very foundation of the State, effectively, in terms of the role of the church and so on, the State never provided the kind of basic public services that were provided in other European states. Instead, on the one hand it outsourced to the church in various forms and on the other hand it passed responsibility onto the family. That gets to the heart of why we debate these issues repeatedly and why carers and young carers in particular are failed so badly.”
“The State says it is on the family and on young carers - on children – to provide all the care people need. That should not be the default position. The onus should be on the State. That was effectively the crux of the Yes-No referendum campaign last year and it is at the heart of why the State is failing carers and children with additional needs so badly. There is an idea the role of the State should only be to provide funding and respite, but obviously that is the bare minimum. It must be much more than that. The idea is that fundamentally we leave care in the hands of carers, that is, of private individuals in the family home. We might compel the Government to give something in the form of money and respite, but it needs to be much more than that.”
“It is striking and shameful one in four young carers has gone to bed or school hungry. That is a direct result of the social protection system refusing, effectively, to recognise the existence of well over 67,000 young carers aged between ten and 17 years. Underlying the horrendous, forgotten way young carers are treated is the need for a transformation in the mindset and approach towards care in our society. This is again and again reflected in debates we have about how carers are treated, but also how services are provided for disabled people, how supports are provided for older people and how provision is made for children with additional needs. Again and again the default position of the State is to say this is on the family in one way or another.”
“It is nothing short of outrageous that the rules covering carer’s allowance and other income supports are still so restrictive they prevent young adult carers from going to college or taking up training or job opportunities. These are people who are, as has been mentioned, effectively doing free labour for the State out of love for a family member in most cases and then being punished for that by being prevented from being able to continue their lives alongside providing care. The entire system of means testing for carer’s payments needs to go. All carers, including young carers, should be entitled as a right to the equivalent of a living wage. That would recognise in a real, material, impactful way the incredibly important work they do and the vast amount of money saved by the State as a consequence of that work.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion and thank Family Carers Ireland and the young carers who have campaigned on it. Like Deputy Stanley, I welcome that the Government is not opposing the motion but I warn Family Carers Ireland and young carers watching this that there is a big gap between not opposing a motion and actually implementing what is in a motion that is passed. If the last Government had implemented just 50% of what was passed in the previous Dáil we would be in a much better place as a country than we are, so the pressure must be kept up. What is outlined in the motion is the bare minimum the State should be doing to support young carers.”
“To quote Francesca Albanese, the genocide must stop, occupation must end, Palestinians must be given the space to breath on their land.”
“This boot licking has been particularly hard to stomach while Gazans were already being consciously starved by Israel of food and electricity. Then a few days after the visit the US, Trump - this man with an unrelenting focus on peace - greenlit the resumption of Israel's genocide in Gaza, killing hundreds and injuring many hundreds more. More than 200 children were slaughtered in just a couple of days. History will remember the Government's cowardice facing this horror. It is utterly shameful that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael told the public during the election campaign not to worry, that they would do the occupied territories Bill. Then they go to America and Micheál Martin says, "Do not worry, that has fallen off the legislative agenda". It is utterly shameful.”
“Our Taoiseach could not bring himself to name Palestine in the presence of Trump. Instead he offered vagaries about peace in Ukraine, the Middle East or wherever and then kept silent while Trump spewed racist and derogatory lies, attacked migrants, Palestinians and LGBTQ people. After this triumph of quiet diplomacy which sums up the relationship between the Irish political establishment and the American capitalist class and is utterly servile, one rapist invited another to supposedly represent Ireland on St. Patrick's Day in the White House, after Simon Harris had given an official invitation to address the Houses of the Oireachtas. It was a deliberate and embarrassing snub of the Government and the invitation should be withdrawn.”
“It has been a week now since Micheál Martin visited Donald Trump in the White House. He grovelled. He licked his boots. He simpered in front of him. He laughed at his stupid jokes and a brave face was put on the appearance by Micheál Martin himself and by the media which spoke about what wise, quiet diplomacy this was. I wonder whether - surely somewhere - deep inside Micheál Martin there is some element of shame of having behaved in such a cowardly way. We have this authoritarian bully, a misogynist, a racist, an anti-worker, a horrendously divisive authoritarian figure and Micheál Martin could not say anything to him. Micheál Martin incredibly said that Donald Trump has an unrelenting focus on peace. He did not say it once, but multiple times. He had obviously planned to say it.”
“It is the most polluting fossil fuel on earth, which activists have fought so hard to ban only for the Taoiseach to try to smuggle it in the back door with the dirty deals with Trump. How can the Taoiseach justify imposing the cost of this onto ordinary people? What will be the impact? How much will they have to pay for this rip-off fracked gas and LNG terminal?”
“Does the Taoiseach accept that since his return to office he has been effectively ripping up the climate Act? He has been greenlighting limitless expansion of data centres and AI powered by fossil fuels. When he was in the US, he gave out about the demonisation of data centres. He rescinded the Government policy statement against fracked gas. Earlier he said we cannot object to fracked gas coming in. The Government has approved a so-called State-led LNG storage terminal. The Taoiseach has welcomed the granting of planning permission for a fracked gas power plant as part of a commercial LNG terminal in Kerry. The so-called State-led LNG terminal, which is supposed to be an emergency reserve, is in fact to supply 95% of domestic gas usage with filthy US fracked gas.”
“It does not deal with the fundamental issue of inadequate funding for this junior school, the senior school and many other schools across the country. This is happening while the State gives more than €140 million every year to private schools. Glenstal Abbey, which asks fees of over €14,000 per year from students, got €1.4 million last year. The Department cannot find €40,000 for the school to which I refer. We need to save our schools and we need to debate this in the Dáil.”
“We need an urgent debate on funding for our schools. Last Thursday, Sacred Heart Junior National School in Killinarden was forced to write to the Department of Education to say that it will be closing its doors on 1 April because it cannot afford to pay its bills. All teaching will be moving online, which is an absolute crisis for the pupils and the families that are affected and which is completely unworkable. Last October, the school flagged with the Department a shortfall of €26,000. Since then, it has got worse. The school has been in constant communication but no funding has been forthcoming. In the past few days, under pressure, the Department made an advance payment to the school, which means it will not close its doors on 1 April. This just kicks the can down the road, however.”
“It can, but it does not do so because recommending misogynistic content makes it rich, so it does not care that it is fuelling gender-based violence and a growing gender divide around the world. The conclusion reached by the researchers was to turn off recommender algorithms by default. Coimisiún na Meán also recommended this in its draft online safety code until the tech companies got to it, and the final version omits any reference to these recommender algorithms. Ireland is in a uniquely powerful position on this. Many of the biggest social media corporations are headquartered here. We have to make them turn off these toxic algorithms for good. This is one of the many reasons people should be on the streets against gender-based violence this International Women's Day, starting in Dublin at 1 p.m. at Dublin City Hall on Saturday.”
“Researchers at DCU set up blank male-identified social media accounts on TikTok and YouTube. Within 23 minutes, they were served up antifeminist and toxically masculine content regardless of whether they looked for it. After two to three hours of running these accounts, three quarters of the recommended content to these male accounts was toxic. Meta's own internal research has found that 64% of all extremist group joins are due to its recommendation tools. It found that Meta's own recommendation systems grow the problem. A leaked internal Meta document states that effective content moderation is practically impossible but that it can, at least, stop magnifying harmful content by giving it unnatural distribution.”
“If we want to tackle gender-based violence, then we have to call a halt to the tidal wave of misogyny coming at young men on social media every day. It is disgusting that the big social media corporations - the so-called big tech "broligarchy" of Zuckerberg and Musk - are profiting from pushing misogynistic, sexist content at teenage boys and men. Rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate, now embraced with open arms by Donald Trump and effectively freed by Donald Trump, is only the most notorious of the influencers in a growing manosphere. This is not about censorship. It is about stopping billionaires such as Elon Musk from enriching themselves even further by pushing misogynistic content aimed at young men. All they care about is getting people to keep watching them for longer and longer in order to make money out of them.”
“Are we going to address the issue of rehoming horses? Are we going to deal with the issue of systemic overbreeding of horses? What is happening in Horse Racing Ireland?”
“Shocking new figures were published in The Mirror today about Irish horses slaughtered in English abattoirs. They suggest that 782 horses with Irish passports were slaughtered in England last year. A total of 538 of those had racing industry passports. In other words, they were racing horses. At least 46% of these were five years old or younger. To be clear, these were not euthanised. They were stressfully transported and then slaughtered for meat in abattoirs. Why are horses barely a few years into their lives being slaughtered for their meat rather than being rehomed when this industry receives €80 million a year in public funding? What has happened to the Government commitment to leave no stone unturned following the "RTÉ Investigates" programme into what happened at Shannonside and other slaughterhouses?”
“Ní éireoidh linn gan ghluaiseacht agus réabhlóid ollmhór a bheith againn agus iallach a chur ar an Rialtas an tslí a ghéilleadh agus tarraingt uainn.”
“Mar sin, mar a rinneadh cheana, caithfidh an Stát seasamh isteach sa bhearna bhaoil agus na tithe seo a thógáil. Éilímid ar Údarás na Gaeltachta tithe a thógáil ar a thalamh féin agus tuilleadh talaimh a cheannach, más gá. Is é seo an réiteach a mbeimis ag screadach ar a shon gach uile sheachtain. Caithfidh an Rialtas an brabús uafásach a bhaint ó thógáil na tithíochta sa Stát seo. Ní tharlóidh sé seo ach trí chomhlacht Stáit tógála. Críochnóidh mé le rud a dúirt mé anuraidh. Ní féidir aon athbheochan a bheith ann ó thaobh na Gaeilge de gan na cainteoirí dúchasacha a bheith mar chroílár air. Níl suim dá laghad ag na caipitlithe atá i gceannas ar an tír an Ghaeilge nó ceantar na Gaeltachta a chaomhnú. Dá mbeadh, ní bheadh sé deacair é a dhéanamh leis an oiread suime agus tola atá i measc an phobail. Ní ar a leas é sin a dhéanamh.”
“Is féidir brath air go leanfaidh sé leis an scannal ó thaobh ghéarchéim tithíochta na Gaeltachta ina bhfuil muintir na Gaeltachta ag fulaingt go géar. Fad is atá beagnach 3,000 duine ar an liosta feithimh do thithíocht shóisialta ann, níl ach seacht áit ar cíos ar daft.ie . Léirítear agus is soiléir an fhadhb nuair a bhreathnaítear thall ar Airbnb agus an rogha abhus de bheagnach 1,000 áit ar cíos gearrthéarmach. Caithfear srian a bheith ar thithe saoire agus ar Airbnb sna ceantair Ghaeltachta. Tá sé ráite go maith ag an grúpa BÁNÚ atá ag eagrú ar an mbonn seo. Ní féidir a bheith ag brath ar an margadh, na forbróirí móra agus cistí móra idirnáisiúnta le fadhbanna tithíochta na Gaeltachta a réiteach mar ní ar a leas é sin a dhéanamh.”
“Tá sé tábhachtach a thuiscint agus a rá nach bhfuil sé i gceist ag an Rialtas riamh go mbeidh sé arís mar phríomhtheanga na tíre againne. Dá mbeadh suim dá laghad ag an Rialtas an teanga a neartú, d'éistfí agus chuirfí i bhfeidhm na héilimh atá á gcur amach go soiléir ag Conradh na Gaeilge agus ag na heagraíochtaí eile. Chuirfí an plean fáis i bhfeidhm agus an plean infheistíochta don Ghaeilge agus don Ghaeltacht don chéad chúig bliana eile. Le barrachas stairiúil an Rialtais, beidh sé go héasca dó €20 milliún atá lorgtha ag na heagraíochtaí a sholáthar seachas a bheith ag cur na billiún isteach i bhfearas cogaidh is míleata agus ionsaí a dhéanamh ar ár neodracht. Déarfaidh mé an méid seo. Is féidir brath ar an Rialtas uaireanta.”
“Bhí oibrithe na heagraíochtaí Gaeilge amuigh ar stailc an tseachtain seo caite. Bhí siad go tógáil raic agus iad i mbun ágóidíochta in aghaidh na gciorruithe atá á gearradh orthu. Deir siad go bhfuil sé soiléir anois go bhfuil struchtúr maoinithe Fhoras na Gaeilge briste. Tá thart ar €17 milliún níos lú ag Foras na Gaeilge inniu nó mar a bhí acu in 2002. Le boilsciú curtha san áireamh, is ionann sin agus ciorruithe de 45% ar bhuiséad Fhoras na Gaeilge thar 20 bliain. Ceangailte leis seo, tá an méid daltaí atá ag staidéar na Gaeilge ag ísliú ó Dheas. Níor shuigh beagnach ceathrú de dhaltaí an scrúdú ardteistiméireachta don Ghaeilge in 2024 agus gearradh 30 nóiméad in aghaidh na seachtaine ó mhúineadh na Gaeilge do dhaltaí bunscoile. Mura raibh sé soiléir uaidh seo, níl meas madra ag an Rialtas dár dteanga dhúchais.”
“Error rates are 60 times higher for west African women than they are for white men. AI reflects, regurgitates and accelerates the racial biases that exist in our society, which come from the top. Together with FRT, this will be used to accelerate racist profiling. The claim by the Garda that it is 99% accurate is terrifying. If the Garda really believes that, we are entering dangerous territory. Instead of going in this direction, we should be joining those many parts of the world that have banned the use of facial recognition technology. We should also ban the use of AI in policing.”
“The previous Government faced effective protests of overwhelmingly masked disabled people against the so-called Green Paper. The Government knows its record on disability is disgraceful and it is under great pressure from the disability rights movement. I have spoken before about how facial recognition technology is universally opposed by human rights groups. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: Face recognition massively expands the government’s power to track our movements and target people based on their race, religion, political affiliation, or speech - and while everyone’s rights are at stake, Black and Brown people are harmed the most when this racist technology collides with our racist systems. There is very significant racial bias within FRT.”
“The Government is committed to legislate to provide for retrospective searching of images, using facial recognition technology before the end of this Dáil term. It goes even further, by promising to introduce live facial recognition technology supposedly only in cases of terrorism, national security - whatever that means - and missing persons. It also pledges to increase funding for CCTV and to ban the wearing of masks at protests. This is dystopian surveillance state stuff. It is also a direct attack on the right of disabled people to protest. Many disabled people need to wear masks for medical reasons and would not be able to take part in protests if banned from wearing them. I have no doubt that this would suit this Government very well.”
“We are in the midst of a manufactured moral panic. To divert attention from away from its failures on housing, health, disability and climate, the Government prefers to have endless statements on policing and to pass more laws that erode our civil liberties. The programme for Government contains a frightening litany of attacks on civil liberties, all under the guise of getting tough on crime. Of course, it is never white-collar crime that they mean, not when they negotiated the programme for Government with Ireland's best known white-collar criminal. I will address one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in the programme for Government, which is the promise to enable the Garda to use AI and facial recognition technology.”
“Is the Taoiseach aware of the report into hip operations at Children's Health Ireland, which has been reported on in The Ditch? It suggests, incredibly, that nearly 80% of hip operations carried out on children in Cappagh hospital, and 60% of those operations in Temple Street, were unnecessary surgeries done on children. A whistleblower suggests they may have been done "purely for financial gain". Will this report be published? Were any further osteotomies carried out in Temple Street or Cappagh after the report was delivered? Is there any plan to extend the extent of the review? It only dealt with the past two years, whereas there may be a need to go back even further.”
“The cause of Government waste is not public sector workers, hard-working teachers, nurses or firefighters; it is the profit-seeking vultures circling the State that are always on the lookout for ways to inflate the cost of Government contracts and to slash the wages and conditions of workers. That is what BAM has done with the national children's hospital. It is that neoliberal, rip-off republic that we need to get away from, not get deeper into, if we want to stop waste.”
“The State has agreed to pay €3.4 billion in rent to vulture funds to lease 9,000 social homes for the next 25 years. When the 25 years are up, those funds will still own the properties and can do whatever they like with them. That is on top of €10 billion in Government handouts to landlords since 2011. That is waste on a colossal scale. The Government could have used that money to directly build public housing and provide permanent social and affordable housing for upwards of 50,000 families. None of that, or the €26 billion set to be wasted on fines for climate inaction, tends to be mentioned in debates on Government waste because it does not fit the right-wing narrative that the public are being fed on this.”
“Let us lift up the bonnet and figure out why Government waste is happening. Is it because we are not outsourcing enough to the private sector? No, the opposite is true. When you dig into any of the infamous examples of Government waste, including the bike shed, in every single case you will find examples of well-connected private companies ripping off the State and the public. Sensori, the company that built the bike shed, was founded by Michael Stone, a big political supporter and a donor to Deputy Donohoe, the man who got his posters up for free. Sensori got more than €21 million in Government contracts in the past two years alone. Charging €336,000 for a bike shed has had no effect on the company continuing to be awarded massive State contracts. Their vans can be seen at this building today. It is the same story with housing.”
“Independent Ireland is so blinded by its right-wing neoliberal ideology that it wants to ape Trump and Musk and set up an Irish version of DOGE, this so-called department of efficiency and reform. We have all seen the horror of what is happening in the US. Staff and funding for cancer research, nuclear safety and public health are all being slashed. Public sector workers are being fired by email. We can be thankful that workers and unions in his country have fought for stronger rights than those in the US. It is not possible to fire thousands of public sector workers at will by email. We know from this motion, however, what Independent Ireland would do if it had that chance. Public sector workers beware; laying waste to the public sector is Independent Ireland's agenda.”
“The motion is right that there has been a lot of waste by this Government so far and by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments down through the years. The motion and the analysis and speeches we have heard from the proposers, however, fail to look under the bonnet and figure out why this waste is happening. The solutions proposed would actually make things even worse. The motion seeks to double down on a neoliberal rip-off republic where public services are outsourced to the private sector leaving behind an empty shell of a state that cannot do basic common-sense things like building public housing, providing bike sheds or building walls. Instead, all of those things are outsourced to a profiteering private sector.”
“On Friday parents of children with additional needs were forced to sleep outside the Department of Education to try to fight for appropriate school places for their children. Earlier that day, the Government announced 254 new special classes in schools. That is much less than the 400 that had been promised. However, when you delve into the detail there are not even 254. I have correspondence with multiple schools saying these classes effectively do not exist. One school said they were in discussions with the NCSE about the establishment of a special class but as it stands, they had received no support to make it happen. They requested the announcements would not be made so that children would not be disappointed. They do not need spin – they need places. That means buildings, teachers and SNAs.”
“He applied twice for planning retention and was denied it. He is now facing a €5,000 fine or a prison sentence if he does not remove it. Does the Taoiseach agree that external wall insulation should be exempt from planning permission?”
“It is hard to imagine a more impactful measure on the wellness of both people and the planet than insulating people's homes. I want to raise an incredible case in my constituency where a family is being threatened with prison for retrofitting and insulating their home. In 2018, Clive Ryan from Kilnamanagh received a Government grant from the SEAI to retrofit his home with external wall insulation. This is exactly the type of climate action that Government grants and Government policy are designed to incentivise. It is a clear win. It is a no-brainer for the householder who has reduced energy bills and for society as a whole because it benefits from lower carbon emissions and reduced air pollution. What happened next is that South Dublin County Council began serving planning notices on Mr. Ryan.”
“At the same time as he pretends to be standing up for the rights of backbenchers, the Taoiseach is halving the opportunities that exist for backbenchers and others. Why is he doing that? It is because he wants to play this game of allowing people to pretend they are in the Opposition when they are in the Government. It will be resisted.”
“It might not be comfortable for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and their supporters in the Lowry group to hear that truth but this is about diminishing the capacity of the Opposition to hold the Government to account.”
“That is what the Business Post is reporting, saying that the line the Minister cited in the programme for Government was included, in reality, to get Healy-Rae support. Is it about appeasing Donald Trump? The Taoiseach said that Europe will have to buy more liquified natural gas from the US to appease tariff threats from Trump. Those are his words, not mine. Are we going to trade away our climate, our children's future and our energy prices to placate Trump's bully-boy tactics in order that the US fossil fuel giants can drill, baby, drill?”
“It is not my contention, Minister. I do not claim to be a climate scientist. It is the contention of those who have researched the matter. Perhaps the Minister is going to ignore the science on it. The answer in terms of energy security and resilience is, first, to stop expanding data centres. They are putting our energy usage on an accelerating upward track - they are going to be at 30% by 2030 - and the Minister is basically telling them to "burn, baby, burn", let it rip and go up even higher. First, we need to reduce energy usage where necessary rather than expanding it. Second are batteries and third is interconnection. I will ask the question explicitly. Was there a secret deal with the Healy-Raes to give a wink and a nod to the Fortress Energy commercial LNG terminal in Tarbert, County Kerry?”
“The paper adds that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority” and yet the Government is going in the opposite direction. The Government is paying lip service to targets that the previous Government was not going to meet, and that this Government is going to miss by an even greater margin, unfortunately, than it was on track to miss them by. It seems that this is driven by the Healy-Raes on one hand and Donald Trump on the other.”
“I note the Minister simply ignored the actual question. That is obviously a prepared answer; he has a prepared question. I could go again. Is the Minister aware that the emissions impact of imported LNG is worse than that of coal? This is research from last October by an environmental scientist called Robert Howarth. I will give the Minister some of the lowlights. The paper states that "LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal." It goes on to state that "Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process." The large resulting emissions mean there is "no need for LNG as an interim energy source".”
“Is the Minister aware that the emissions impact of imported LNG is worse than even coal? It is the dirtiest fossil fuel. Despite that, the Taoiseach has said that we will "have to have an LNG facility of some kind." Will the Minister be going along with the Taoiseach? Will that be a so-called State-led project, as the previous Government was in favour of, or a commercial LNG? Can the Minister update us on the progress of the memo his Department is meant to be bringing forward?”
“It is clear we now have an obligation under the EU directive on minimum wages to get rid of this because there is no objective justification for it. That is what the Low Pay Commission is saying. Instead, the Department is allowing itself to just represent the interests of some of the lowest-paying employers in the country - people who want to employ workers on less than the minimum wage. There is no objective justification for that. It is fundamentally unjust.”
“Where is the nuance? Will the Minister of State tell me why 18-year-olds should be legally paid 80% of the minimum wage? They cannot tell their landlord they will only pay 80% of the rent. They cannot give a supermarket 80% of the cost of their groceries. What is the objective justification for paying a young person less than the minimum wage purely on the basis of his or her age? When is the economic impact assessment going to happen? The Department officials came before the committee in September and said they had started it - it was another exercise in kicking the can down the road - and it would be ready in six to nine months. Six months have now passed. When is it going to be ready? It is time to stop kicking the can down the road. The issue is not enormously complex.”
“If he is, he is going against the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission, which make clear that would not stand up under EU law. The EU law on adequate minimum wages states that any exceptions need to have objective justification. Business costs and the Minister looking after low-paying employers does not count as an objective justification. He may well be in breach of the EU directive.”
“The Minister of State says we should not rush into a decision. It is two years since this Dáil passed a Bill that I brought forward to abolish these rates. The Government brought in a timed amendment to delay it for a year so the Low Pay Commission could report. The Low Pay Commission studied it with the ESRI study, as the Minister of State said, and it came out with clear recommendations. The Minister of State says he agrees with the commission that the Government needs to consider it. Does he agree with the commission's very clear recommendation that subminimum wage rates for employees of 18 and 19 years of age should be abolished no sooner than 1 January 2025? Similarly, the rates for those under 18 should also be abolished. The recommendation is absolutely clear. Is the Minister of State saying business costs are a consideration here?”
“Will the Minister finally abolish the legalised discrimination and super-exploitation of young people in this country who are currently legally paid as little as €9.50 an hour, purely on the basis of their age? Will he abolish these subminimum wage rates whereby those under 18 can legally be paid less than the minimum wage? The can has been kicked down the road for years now. It is time to abolish these rates.”