Life on low pay is often far too hard - The Low Pay Commission

THE principle of having a minimum wage that can allow low-paid workers live with dignity is one of the most hotly contested interfaces between business and the ideas of human dignity and social equity.

Some businesses always oppose any proposal to improve the rate, warning that to do so would have a negative impact on competitiveness. That reality is of little comfort to the families barely making ends meet, if at all, because their main bread winner is paid the pretty paltry €8.65 an-hour minimum wage.

Those in favour of a decent minimum wage need only to refer to some stark statistics. In Ireland, 9% of families where the head of the family has a job live in persistent poverty. A person earning the minimum wage earns €8.65 an hour, or €340.60 for a 40-hour week, which translates into €17,992 gross over a full year. The Central Statistics office published a report just yesterday which showed that average weekly pay stood at €704.34 at the end of December, up 2.3% on the €688 recorded a year earlier. This means that the minimum wage is less than half of the average wage, hardly an matrix that shows social equity is alive and well in Ireland. In fact, according to the CSO, just 4.7% of the workforce are paid the minimum wage, so increasing it even marginally may not be such a huge challenge.