Paul Murphy attacks energy profiteering, calls for €15 minimum

Thanks. Listening to the Taoiseach yesterday, his remarks were striking. He was warning workers about a potential wage price spiral. Basically, after the horse has bolted, after workers are experiencing a reduction in income in real terms, he was saying, don't put in for wage rises, you might make inflation even worse. Attempting to blame workers in reality for the inflation that we're seeing. The truth is that inflation is profit-led, not cost-push. Look at the real examples, for example, energy bills. Rapid inflation, everybody acknowledges it. Energia today announced their profits went up an astounding 50% last year, making money hand over fist, and the government is letting them away with it. Price gouging, pure and simple. It's time to tackle the profiteers by imposing price caps on the unit cost of electricity and gas. The Minister has the power to implement these controls. He could do it today. If he wished, he chooses not to do so. The privatisation and deregulation of electricity and gas companies in this country has been a disaster. We have record profits being made by energy companies, while heating bills are going through the roof. Rather than leading to investment in renewable energy, it has led to more and more money being wasted on advertising, telemarketing, coming up with a plethora of introductory offers, with sneaky fine print, giving people a chore of shopping around, combined then ultimately with higher prices and worse conditions for workers. The energy sector should not be run for profit. The energy sector should not be run for profit. It should be brought back into public ownership and run democratically as part of an eco-socialist Green New Deal. If the government will not take action to bring down the cost of living, then workers are left with no option but to fight for pay increases higher than the rate of inflation. Workers across the country would be absolutely right and would have the support of people before profit to follow the example of the Dunn's workers who won a 10 per cent pay increase recently. There is no reason why other workers cannot do the same. But what is needed is workplace organising, building the courage, determination and unity needed. I would say the same to public sector workers who are being told that all they will get is the paltry 1 per cent increases previously agreed. The rapid inflation, the government's refusal to address it, makes those agreements obsolete, in my opinion. A 1 per cent raise is a significant pay cut and it should not be accepted. Simultaneously, the minuscule increases in the minimum wage are not enough. They also amount to an actual pay reduction. The minimum wage in this country is a poverty wage. Even working a full 40-hour week on the minimum wage, you would be left and you are left below the poverty line, unable to pay rent. No worker should be living in poverty. We need to build a movement to fight for a 15 euro an hour minimum wage to raise the wage floor and wage wages for all workers in this country. That equates to 600 euros a week before tax or just over 30,000 euros a year, a fraction of what TDs pay themselves. Many of these minimum wage workers are precisely those essential workers who kept our shops open, who kept our society functioning in the course of Covid. They got a clap, but they deserve a raise. The minimum wage wage is 1 quarter, but they have the maximum wage wage. The minimum wage wage is to make one of the costs of Covid-19, so they want to pay for 5.2. The minimum wage wage is to be less tax-free. The minimum wage means to be less than 50% up to one of the costs of Covid-19, so that we have enough wage wage.