National Minimum Wage (Inclusion of Young Persons, Apprentices and Interns) Bill 2025: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17
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Laura Harmon (LAB), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I am proud to second this Bill for my colleague, Senator Cosgrove. I commend all of her work. She has been an advocate for workers' rights and young people throughout her whole career. This goes to the heart of what the Labour Party is about. I am proud to see that this Bill is supported by trade unions, student unions and youth organisations across the country. I note that our Cross-Party Group in the Seanad, comprising me and Senators Cosgrove, Noonan and Stephenson, have used every one of our Private Members' slots to bring forward sensible legislative proposals. I hope that everyone in the Chamber will support the Bill.
This Bill would remove the section of the National Minimum Wage Act which provides for settling lower rates of pay for workers under 20 years of age. I believe that the system currently in place amounts to age discrimination and must end. It puts a particular strain on young people as they try to cover living costs and the cost of education. This is a time when we have the highest levels of outward youth emigration from Ireland since 2015. We need to keep young people in the country and encourage them into sectors of the workforce where we need them. One quarter of employees aged 15 to 19 receive less than the current minimum wage, the majority because they are on subminima rates and some because they are apprentices. Subminima rate employment among young women is two percentage points higher than among young men. Last year, the Low Pay Commission, which was established by the Labour Party, recommended the abolition of these lower rates. The original purpose of these rates, back in the 1990s, was to discourage early school leaving. That should not be a primary concern now, with Ireland's secondary school completion rates among the highest in Europe.
Another argument in favour of keeping these subminima rates is that employers will stop hiring young workers. This is simply false, as research shows. However, it would seem inconsistent to argue both that fewer young people will get work if they are entitled to the minimum wage and also that this entitlement to a minimum wage would incentivise higher levels of early school leaving.
In terms of apprenticeships, we absolutely need to ensure that we are paying apprentices properly, as Senator Cosgrove mentioned. Low rates of pay contribute to drop-out rates for apprentices. As the Labour spokesperson on higher and further education, that is deeply concerning to me. We in Ireland have huge issues in our workforce and in terms of workforce planning across a number of different sectors. Paying apprentices properly must be key to solving that. We cannot just pay lip service and say we want to encourage more people into apprenticeships if we are not paying them properly. We absolutely need to ensure that this happens.
It is also worth noting that because of inflation in the period between 2022 and now, an apprentice's wage had greater spending power in 2022 than it does today. That is another argument for increasing the rates.
More than one in four apprentices responding to the Connect Trade Union survey in 2024 reported being paid less than the agreed rates and more than half said that completion of their apprenticeship had been delayed by over a year. As well as compromising workers' rights, it also frustrates our efforts to solve the housing crisis, to progress a just transition and to meet our climate targets, arguably two of the most urgent needs of today's society. Workforce planning is a huge issue, as I mentioned previously.
The National Minimum Wage Act also applies to internships, which are a form of employment and are not a recognised legal category. Despite this, unpaid internships remain common. This Bill would make it clear that interns, trainees and those undergoing work experience can nevertheless fall under the remit of the Act. It provides that any person who does more than 30 hours of work within any period of four weeks for another person is to be regarded as an employee for the purposes of the Acts, even where there is no contract of employment and instead he or she is described as a trainee or intern, or as a person on work experience. EU figures show that nearly half of internships are unpaid and over two thirds do not attract any social protections. For those reasons, I encourage colleagues from all parties and none to support this very sensible legislation from my colleague, Senator Cosgrove. I say that because it is the right thing to do and because of equality, age discrimination, the benefits to our economy and workforce planning.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-17