National Minimum Wage (Inclusion of Young Persons, Apprentices and Interns) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel I said to my two colleagues, Senators Cosgrove and Harmon, that there was a time when I thought Labour had lost its soul. I am delighted to see that it has a soul and is prepared to nail its colours to the mast here. There are young people in the Public Gallery today. If ever they needed a reason to join a trade union, they are hearing it tonight. They are hearing it because the animal instincts of capitalism are alive and well. They have heard the nonsense statements that have been made. No worker should ever work the same hours or do the same amount of work for less money than their colleagues. I do not care whether they are working in a shop, a hotel or on a building site. My colleague, the last speaker, spoke about people getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning to get onto a dirty, cold building site for a few miserable euro per hour. Who is benefiting from it? The employer. The bottom line on it is this is a wonderful Bill. It is a short Bill and there is not a whole lot to it, but it highlights the inequality that exists in our society. By the way, apprentices and interns have been mentioned, but we are missing out on the professions like the legal profession and accounting profession, which exploit young people who go into work. The exploitation of young people has been the bane of this country. It is wrong in every way. I am aware of apprentices who had to buy cars in order to travel to the sites they were working on. They could not afford to have a car and a social life. It was one or the other in order to get themselves trained. Apprenticeship is a bit like religion. If you believe in it, you will be rewarded in the next life. That was the way it was. I started my working life as an apprentice. I earned £1.50 a week. That was 59 years ago. I got a better job as a barman for £2.50 a week, so I packed it in. Why would I bother picking up a qualification, a skill that would have left me wealthy for all of my life? I packed it in because I could get more money as a barman, which led to 16 different changes of career throughout my life, the last one being in Seanad Éireann, thanks so much to Fine Gael for electing me on that day. The truth of the matter is I know that somebody somewhere is pulling the string here. We are hearing all the things about legal advice and things happening time. My first colleague and good friend from Galway said that this would be looked at in 2026. Why reject and oppose the Bill? Why not just say that we will bring it back in 2026 with whatever amendments are needed? Why kill it tonight? It is being killed in front of trade unionists and young people - future voters. I would say to those voters that they see what the left thinks and what the capitalists think, and they should make up their own minds. I am an Independent. Always support good Independents. We are very good. Some of those in this building will know that interns have worked for Members of this House and got nothing for it. That is wrong in every sense of the word. I had a student when I was teaching in Blackrock. I placed him in a company in Galway for his work experience. At the end of three weeks, the employer turned to him, thanked him and said he would send a nice report back to the college. The young fellow rang me and said he had been doing a lot of work for this guy and had seen the employer invoicing for the work the student had done. He asked what I thought. I asked what he thought. He said he thought he should be paid for it. I said to him to tell the employer that. The employer called and told me that the cheeky little so and so I had sent to him had asked to be paid. The employer said he was giving him work experience. It was computers he was working on. I asked whether he repaired the machines. The employer said he did. I asked whether the employer had invoiced people for the work the student had done. The employer said he had. I asked whether the employer thought the student's labour was worth money. He said I was right, and he paid him. Immediately after the course finished, he hired him. The guy and the employer got on very well together and had great work. That is respect for a worker. I think Senator Cosgrove mentioned mum and dad funding people's apprenticeships. I am delighted to say I have two children and I never funded anything for them. Once they hit a certain age, they went out and worked their way through life and got their professions. They worked hard and I have no doubt that they were exploited at the early stage of their careers. It is so wrong to reject this Bill. The Minister of State has the power to stand up in this House tonight, reject what the party and the Government are saying, take his courage in his hands and tell these two wonderful Senators that he will defer further discussion on this Bill until 2026, when we will all come back here, have a wonderful get-together and deliver for apprentices in this country. The Minister of State can go west this weekend as we head towards Christmas, meet apprentices in the Welcome Inn in Castlebar and say he stood with them. He can do that, or he can say two Labour Senators tried to run a Bill past me so that the apprentices could have Christmas. The bottom line is we need to wake up and deliver for young people. I beg the Minister of State to take his courage in his hands. --- 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