National Minimum Wage (Inclusion of Young Persons, Apprentices and Interns) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel I commend Senator Cosgrove on introducing this Bill, and her colleagues. It is worthwhile. Sinn Féin supports the Bill because it does a basic thing, provides for equal pay for equal work. Anything other than that is discriminatory, exploitative and amounts to cheap labour. It is open to abuse by some employers. Young people, whether they are 17 or 21 years old, pay the same rate of tax, PRSI and USC. They are entitled to be paid the same rate for the same work. The whole concept of a reduced rate minimum wage is outdated and old fashioned. It was introduced to encourage people to take up part-time work, but not to leave school. As Senator Harmon outlined, times have changed significantly. We have one of the highest rates of secondary school completion and one of the highest rates of uptake of higher education. Costs have changed as well. Young people have significant costs. We cannot expect parents to cover their phone bills, transport costs and accommodation costs, especially if they are in education and living away from home. The cost of living in general affects young people as much as it does any of the rest of us. It also affects families, all of whom are feeling the pinch. My party colleague Paul Gavan introduced similar legislation when he was a Member of the Seanad. I have colleagues in the Dáil who are considering similar legislation for introduction there soon. These reduced rates have been abolished in Germany, Spain, Belgium, South Korea and Canada. We need to follow suit. My son was working recently in a hotel. When he started to work there, he was under 18 years and was paid €9.45 an hour. When he reached 18 years, his pay went up to €10.80. Other people in the hotel aged 19, 20 and over were doing exactly the same work. The work did not change when my son turned 18. He was able to carry out the same work as anybody else aged 17, 18, 19, etc. It is not fair that somebody is paid over €4 an hour extra just because they are a fewer years older when they are doing precisely the same work. Often, the work young people do is very hard. They work unsociable hours, weekends and late nights in pubs and takeaways. They are often subjected to abuse from people coming into those establishments. They deserve to be paid properly. We do not have gender discrimination; we should not have age discrimination. On internships, it is now the case that only the wealthy can take up internships. People cannot afford to live without being paid. They cannot afford to take up an internship where they are being paid little or nothing for the year because of the cost of living, the cost of accommodation, etc. It is only people from wealthy families whose parents can support them who can now take up an internship. In relation to apprenticeships, we need to increase the number of people participating in apprenticeships, especially in the construction sector. We need houses. That is not happening, however. Poor pay, particularly in the first two years, is not enticing people to enter apprenticeships. One young man who lives near me left school at 17 or 18 years old, did something else for a few years and then decided to do an apprenticeship as an electrician. He was receiving just over €7 an hour in his first year. That went up to something over €8 an hour in his second year. That is not sustainable. There are many older people who are considering taking up an apprenticeship, but they cannot afford to do so. They could be married with children and a mortgage and have additional costs. We need them to take up apprenticeships. The pay is a disincentive, however. There are other issues as well and we are addressing those in the committee on higher education. We need to incentivise people to take up apprenticeships and make it attractive to do so, especially as three out of five of our young people are considering leaving the country currently. We need them to stay here. We need to incentivise them to take up apprenticeships or work here. We were talking about a change of use for the National Training Fund. Maybe we should be looking at the fund as a source of funding to support our apprentices in getting better pay for the work they are doing. Sinn Féin supports the Bill. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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