Elaine Loughlin: Who do Healy-Rae and the Rural Independents actually represent?
It seems members of the Rural Independents are for poor people when they burn turf, but against them when they go out to work.
Or maybe it's the other way round? Getting to the nub of what they really believe is akin to deciphering Mayan script.
One by one, Michael Healy-Rae and his fellow Rural Independent men stood up last week in the Dáil to poke holes at a bill to provide our working poor with a living wage.
It’s “gas” to see Labour trying to make amends for the harm they did in Government, said Danny Healy-Rae.
Won’t someone think of the small-business people (as well as the poor), harangued Mattie McGrath. Government initiatives on sick pay, pensions, and a living wage “completely miss the point” when they should be focused on affordable housing, yelped Michael Collins.
So which is it? Support the poor, or support the poor when it suits them?
"Men of property, presenting themselves as men of the people," is how Labour TD Sean Sherlock summed up the group of Independent TDs who sit closest to the Ceann Comhairle.
A living wage sets down an evidence-based rate of pay that is deemed adequate income to give people a socially acceptable minimum standard of living.
The living wage was set at €12.90 per hour last year, some €2.40 higher than the current minimum wage.
“Hypocritical”, was the charge made by Michael Healy-Rae against the Labour Party for bringing forward the proposal.
Lashing out at the "total disregard" the party had for vulnerable and poorer people when it was in Government, he claimed Labour was now trying to make up for past transgressions with its Living Wage Bill.
He said there had been "good people" who supported Labour who have "completely abandoned" the party as it is responsible for "the hypocritical bills like this one that have been brought forward, yet forgets what the party did to hurt the people that they talk about protecting now".
"When a person has to speak to this bill, one obviously must look at who proposed it. One must remember what this same party did when it was in power and had a say."
Citing the abolition of the bereavement grant, Healy-Rae had a point to make, but it is now six years since Labour occupied the Government benches.
Even in power, Labour had been calling for the introduction of a living wage, albeit on a phased basis.
“A living wage would be higher than the minimum wage, and would provide the income necessary to meet basic needs, including housing and healthcare, on top of items such as food and heating,” then Social Protection Minister Joan Burton stated back in 2013.
By contrast, it has taken Healy-Rae and his Rural Independent colleagues, who all were enraged that people struggling to pay home heating bills would have their turf taken away, only a matter of days to flip-flop on their priorities.
The Independent TDs were unique in their criticism of the living wage bill which, when brought to the floor of the Dáil last week, was even supported by Fine Gael, the traditional party of big farmers and big business.
Minister of State Damien English went as far as making a cheeky suggestion that Labour was now "aligning" with the Government on the issue.
Sinn Féin's Johnny Guirke said inflation means people must now choose between paying rent, heating their homes, and putting food on the table, and that workers "need a living wage now more than ever to try to stay out of poverty and avoid being pushed into the hands of moneylenders that charge extortionate rates".
PBP-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy highlighted the 370,000 workers in this country who are regarded as low-paid.
However, there was a marked change in the contributions when Cork South West TD Michael Collins got up to argue that the Irish economy is at risk of being dragged into a "wage-price spiral" if workers begin demanding higher wages to match the current cost-of-living increases.
He said the "voiceless" are the small businesses with fewer than 10 people who are the "lifeblood" of rural Ireland.
"There is the already high cost of doing business in Ireland, the added risk of inflation, energy prices, and the crippling levels of bureaucracy and red tape that emanate from the Government on an almost daily basis," he said.
While making casual reference to the "new poor", Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath said: "We must think of the small businesspeople who also deserve a chance to be supported and not to be strangled with legislation.
"There is no impact analysis whatsoever of the likely impact on small self-employed people who want to give jobs to people."
Richard O'Donoghue went as far as suggesting that the Government sees the introduction of a living wage as a tax-raising measure.
He said: "Who are the only winners up at the moment with inflation? It is the Government. Who are now trying to get the Government to earn more money? When wages increase, the tax also increases. Who gets the tax? It is the Government. What does it do? It wants to put businesses, which are already struggling with the highest insurance and other running costs in Europe, out of business."
Danny Healy-Rae, who can claim up to €33,395 a year in travel expenses, then said: "I know better than anyone else that people's wages do not go far enough now because of the cost of everything, including the cost of travelling to work. In Kerry, people need to travel to work."
While supporting the "thrust of the bill" he said: "Nobody here is helping employers — putting every regulation in the world on them and putting every increase in their way by the way of carbon tax."
But for all their talking, the group did not feel strongly enough to press for a vote on the matter, and the Living Wage Bill passed to committee stage.
It all raises questions around who exactly the Rural Independents think they represent and what they stand for: anything or everything?
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