National Minimum Wage (Inclusion of Young Persons, Apprentices and Interns) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel To say I am disgusted is an understatement. Clearly, all of us are equal but some are more equal than others. I do not know how the Minister of State is able to stand up in front of all these young people and trade unionists who I invited to come. Fair play to Senator O'Reilly for showing up today. He came and listened to the voices of the people representing those working in trades. He listened to ICTU's arguments about pushing forward and supporting this Bill and he listened to representatives from the National Youth Council of Ireland. He was able to have the bravery to stand up and say they are right, this is exploitation of young workers and we are not treating people the way we should be. People are doing the same level of work and they should be treated fairly. Since being elected to this House, I expected a timed amendment because, as the Minister of State said, it is so complicated. If it is that complicated, why did he not give us a timed amendment and 12 months to discuss it? Is that not what committees are supposed to be about, so we can discuss this? The Minister of State asked us to engage and I invited him to do so but he did not show up. All the Opposition showed up, and I thank the Members for doing that and showing up in masses to the briefing today. It was a really important briefing and was obviously able to change the mind of someone like Senator O'Reilly. Government talks about engagement but this is not engagement; this is becoming like a dictatorship. Everything we introduce into this House is rejected. This is our fourth Private Members' Bill we have introduced and I thought this one would, like the other three, go into the filing cabinet of timed amendments, but it has not. It has been totally dismissed and the Minister of State encouraged people here to reject it. I know people on all sides of the House want to vote with their conscience because they know this is the right thing to do. We can see from the low representation on the Government benches here today that people want to vote for this. I agree with Senator Craughwell that this is within the Minister of State's gift. He could decide to push it out for a year. Surely, this is what timed amendments are about. On the argument of 16-year-olds or 17-years-olds, at 16 years of age, you can drive a motorbike and get a pilot's licence. You can drive a tractor at 16. At 18, you can get married and vote. This idea that, because of your age, you will be paid less for doing exactly the same job as someone older than you is outdated, unfair and discriminatory. We are in the middle of an absolute housing catastrophe and 20% of apprentices are dropping out in their first year. How is this solving the housing crisis and how is this engagement? If the Minister of State had come here today and listened to Connect Trade Union and its representative, Paddy Kavanagh, he would have seen that, with the neoliberal politics and this circle of privilege the Government is driving and continues to drive, 47% of apprentices dropping out in the UK in the first year. We are heading off a cliff. If we keep going this way, where we are bringing Bills from Opposition and Government is just rejecting them, we are heading off a cliff. We are all in this together. That is why I got elected, by saying we are all in this together and we are here to work together, but clearly we are not. Three out of five young people are thinking of leaving our country because of the housing crisis and cost-of-living crisis, and although we need apprenticeships more than ever, they are not taking up these jobs. I do not know how the Government cannot listen to this and reconsider pushing it out to 12 months, which I would accept. The Minister of State talked about the apprenticeship action plan. Will this be the same action plan as the disaster that has been the housing action plan? Is the minimum wage going to be in that for apprenticeships, and even if it is and if we get the perfect action plan, what about young workers? Will they still be exploited? Even within young workers, it is exploitative of women workers. I heard in the briefing today that young hairdressers in apprenticeships are not even getting an incremental amount of pay, so they are being doubled down on with discrimination. I am disgusted, to be honest. I commend Senator O'Reilly for listening and I encourage other people on the Government benches to do the same. --- 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