Leo Varadkar: Workers should get pay rises to help with higher living costs

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar: "Now it's not the case that everyone in every workplace is getting a pay raise."

Workers should receive pay rises from companies in 2022 to help deal with the rising cost of living, the Tánaiste has said.

Leo Varadkar was speaking as the Central Bank warned it is on the lookout for “damaging wage increases” as it forecasts inflation will stay higher for longer right up to the summer months.

Mr Varadkar called on employers to assist where possible, but accepted this would mean that some people are getting left behind.

"Where they can afford to, of course, and they are doing that. We saw last year a 7% increase in income tax take not because we increased income taxes, we didn't, but because pay is rising and there's more people at work. Now it's not the case that everyone in every workplace is getting a pay raise.

"To a certain extent that will always be the case (people being left behind). You know, it's never going to be the case that everyone is able to get the same pay rise and it will at least depend on the circumstances," he told the Claire Byrne show on RTÉ Radio,

"It has to be part of the solution. You know, it's a fact that we haven't had much inflation for a long time in Ireland but it's not new. And it's something we've experienced in the past."

The Tánaiste said one of the reasons the Government has "increased welfare, pensions, reduced income tax, increased the minimum wage policy in the last couple of weeks, is to help respond to inflation. "And I think pay raises have to be part of that. But of course they have to be affordable."

On the same programme, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Patricia King, said that Mr Varadkar's right to request remote working bill was fundamentally flawed. She said that the reasons that an employer can say no to a request are "stacked in the employer's interest".

"One is planned structural changes which would render any of these inapplicable," she said.

"How would a worker have any knowledge about what the planned restructuring is? So an employer can receive your request and write back to you and say 'no we can't give you that because we have planned restructuring'.

"Whether they have or not would be open to question," she said.

Asked later by Pat Kenny on Newstalk about the situation in Ukraine, Mr Varadkar said it would be "a mistake" for Russia to invade. He said that Ireland would respond through the EU and UN, but told Cork fishermen planning to disrupt Russian naval exercises off the coast of Ireland next month to "take care".

“The Government supports the right to peaceful protest,” he said.

“They would be international waters; they wouldn’t be in territorial waters but if the Irish fishing fleet or parts of the fleet were to go out into international waters and carry out a peaceful protest, they would be acting within their rights.

“But I would also say to take care. This is international waters and this is the Russian Navy.

“These are military vessels, this is a nuclear-powered military power so just whatever you do, in terms of any protest or peaceful protest just take care not to put yourself at unnecessary risk.”