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AN INCREASE IN Ireland’s minimum wage is set to come into effect today.
The minimum wage is rising by 80 cent to €13.50 an hour, a bump of 6.3%.
It means that a full-time worker receiving minimum wage would now earn an additional €30 a week or €1,600 across the year (before tax).
However, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has criticised that the new minimum wage is still worth less than 60% of median earnings – a benchmark for pursuing a new national living wage to replace the minimum wage.
“There is no place in a modern, rich country like Ireland for any worker to be paid below the 60% poverty line,” ICTU general secretary Owen Reidy said.
“Momentum must be maintained by the new government to meet the agreed 60% target in 12 months, with a view to setting a subsequent target of 66% thereafter – a target reached in the UK last April by a Tory government,” Reidy said.
“The National Minimum Wage turns 25 in 2025. Doomsayers predicted when it was first introduced in 2000, and every year the rate goes up, that it will bankrupt businesses and cost jobs. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” he said in a statement.
“Trade unions have never denied sector specific challenges and that some businesses will have further to travel than others in bringing working conditions in line with the norm across Europe. Vulnerable but viable businesses should be supported. But those business supports should be targeted, time-limited and agreed through dialogue with the social partners. Workers cannot be left to pick up the bill for reducing the cost of doing business.”
In addition to the minimum wage increase, several bumps in social welfare payments are set to take effect today, among other changes as part of Budget 2025:
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€13.50 an hour. Let the good times roll. A worker can now afford a can of lynx in tesco express and a jambon in a spar deli counter now after an hour of breaking their back doing manual jobs nobody else wants to do. What a time to be alive in this amazingly fair country.
@Dan The Man:
Highly exaggerated comment. The pay increase is great news for lower paid workers, and it’s well deserved.
@Trish: In fairness the context is correct, while the media are parading the wage increase, its coming days after the price of fuel has once again increased, meaning its a reward but will be quickly taken away before anyone gets to enjoy it sadly
@Dan The Man: as someone on the minimum wage I welcome it
@Patrick Newell: The context is inaccurate or are we reading the same comment? The goods and the cost prices mentioned are silly. There are plenty of workers out there who will be delighted with the pay increase.
The people who criticize the positives in life will probably never be happy.
@Dan The Man: well start you own business and see how much profit you make for yourself and paying someone who picks up glasses 30K a year
@Peter Byrne: Conversely, one could pack in their own business and go make 30k a year for “picking up glasses”..and see if making profit or making ends meet are the same thing..
@Peter Byrne: Name me one business that pays someone 30K to just pick up glasses?. Also minimum wage won’t be 30k a year I’ll be a little over 27k.
@Ger Whelan: so 27k a year to clear glasses I think is the point. I know people who get more in handouts than others in supposedly ‘good’ jobs.
@Thesaltyurchin: Can you tell me one job that hires a person whose job is just to pickup glasses and nothing else?.
@Ger Whelan: Bar job maybe? I dunno, I think the point is ANY menial job will soon be close enough to many of the ‘careers’ people are in. Like at some point, the teacher and the McDonalds drive through attendant will be on almost the same wage.
@J B: and that’s exactly why e scooters must never be banned
@Thesaltyurchin: nope a bar job doesn’t pay someone to just pick up glasses they have many other duties to do. So people doing “Any menial job” as you put it don’t deserve to be paid enough to live in today’s society?. I’m going to assume you are getting paid just above minimum wage and thus your employer doesn’t have to give you a pay rise and now people doing “Any menial job” are now getting paid similar to you and you don’t like that. It’s the only reason a person could be so butt hurt that minimum wage is going up.
@J B: Really?
@Peter Byrne: if they only pick up glasses they can do it themselves
@J B: How dare they get from place to place in a timely manner? A scooter at 110km/h is dangerous? Imagine a vehicle 70 times heavier travelling even faster… like an average car…
@Ger Whelan: Lol! okay we’re now arguing the argument. It’s not about me, I’m fine (or whatever terms your memory palace makes up for me, to suit your argument (not even the point):)… What I’m saying is: People wont be happy, the closer the ‘teenager jobs’ get to the middle class the less people will want to be, a bus driver, etc. Thats my zoomed out take, thats what the original commenter was saying. I think the rise is correct but that doesn’t remove the knock on effects.
@Dan The Man: keep dreaming
@Peter Byrne: if your business can justify a full time position “just picking up glasses” then you must have a thriving business and surely can afford to properly pay someone to do the job.
@Dan The Man: yes is unfair yet most people voted this government in. 80 cent extra not whole lot compared to cost s of everything here. What increase are government officials getting . They wont be feeling pitch . Happy new year dan
The only way for many businesses to survive is to pass the increased cost along to the consumer so that immediately counterbalances the increase whilst at the same time harming struggling businesses. Rents will go up too if there is increased money chasing finite rental accommodation.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: Businesses kept quiet during the election when they could have come together and call out FFG or the shinners and demanded things like better controls on energy, insurance costs etc…..Instead they stayec quiet and said nothing. While I have sympathy for those that struggle, I dont also have any when they dont do anything other than point the finger at their staffs wages as the reason things are bad.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: the cost of living, rents and utilities , insurance and fuel are all going up anyway. It is not the rise in living wage that is making businesses precarious. However employees paid only the living wage are unable to avoid becoming the working poor because employers do see their wages as one cost they can minimise instead of understanding that good pay will result in better morale and better work performance.
@Canon: See.
From todays Irish Independent
Motorists face another cost rise as price of petrol and diesel to go up again on January 1.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: Presenting an 80c per hour pay increase as a negative thing because of the knock-on effect of how much rent people can afford to pay is the most out-of-touch thing I’ve heard in quite a while. Bonus points for also including a thought for the poor “struggling businesses” who pay their workers so low that it would be illegal for them to pay any less.
@Patrick Newell: well start your own b IU business so, and pay your staff 60K a tear, see how that works out
@Patrick Newell: Patrick if you care to check during the Election campaign the Restaurant Association of Ireland had a full list of measures along the lines you suggest, that they asked all the Political Parties to implement if they were in Government after the Election. Some did agree, so it will be interesting to see what those Parties do, if they end up in Government.
@Peter Byrne: So what you want businesses to be allowed dictate what people should be paid, based on how well they do……oh ya can imagine how that would work out, some creative accounting and cooking of the books in your world and nobody would be paid more than 100 euro a week cos the poor business owners told us it
@Patrick Newell: When were Sinn Féin in government again?
Not much good when everything else is increasing 2 fold
@Ian Cryan: everything is not increasing two fold. And the minimum wage will push prices up when the retailers pass it on. It’s a vicious cycle.
@Dermot Blaine: switch over to your other account
@Liam Boyne: I have 1 account
Waiting for ISME, VFI, Hospitality etc reps to come out crying about this, saying its the primary reason for everything being more expensive……while neglecting other reasons cos that would mean calling out their mates who run the country
Dont spend it all in one shop now!
@Dave Callaghan:
It will be spent in the shop because retailers will put up prices to cover the extra wages. The public pay for wage increases not businesses.
Congratulations to all beneficiaries
@qffaffaf affrafrfraf: Revenue, the house always wins.
RTE news report last night had the boss of a hairdresser chain on , moaning about the rate increase. A quick Google of his price list showed that he charges between €40 to €55 ( depending on the branch) for a man’s haircut. The prices for a woman were way over €100. I think he was wearing a rolex watch while moaning about the increase ?
Last week on newstalk, a coffee shop owner went on about how great he was making sure the coffee bean farmer was being paid a fair price while then moaning about having to pay his own staff the increase.
@Sammydavissenior.: exactly
A guy 10 years in a company on 15 per hour where a guy with no experience on 1.50 Less, soon the guy 10 plus years will be minimum wage himself if it keeps rising at this rate.
All those complaing about the minimum wage, should try running their own business , paying someone 30K a year to sweep the floor will only lead to job losses and business closures
@Peter Byrne: get a vacuum
@Peter Byrne: OR what they really want from you… get a Franchise
@Peter Byrne: No whats a pain is business owners throwing their staff under a bus all the time. Wages would be fine if businesses with their influential mob in ISME, IBEC and the rest spent less time kissing the backsides of the politicians and pandering to them and instead actually demand real action on the causes of wages having to increase. But nahhhh sure its easier to blame the workers for everything. Like the pub industry complaining about wages yet nobody asking diageo why booze prices have increased, insurance is so high and the rest and how that needs to be controlled
@Peter Byrne: Business owners are constantly moaning about having to pay staff, it would wreck your head, minimum wage was introduced in 2000 so miserable creeps would actually pay staff and it’s stuck in their gut ever since…arse wipes
@Seanie: It’s funny how Peter mentioned having to pay people to pick up glasses or sweep floors, two jobs he doesn’t want to do himself but doesn’t want to pay people to do either, if you don’t want to pay people… get out of business.
@Peter Byrne: even if know pay rise for people the cost of living would still go up
@Dave G Doe: self serve kiosks have been in fast food outlets for years here, doesn’t matter how much or little humans are paid, corporations will try to avoid paying them
And so too do bills and groceries
The Northern Minister for the Economy is coming south. He’ll sort it all out.
@Vincent Alexander: The Shinner money guy in the North has the minimum wage starting at £7.20 and up to £10:20, with years of experience. They say one thing down here and do another in the North.
@D Farrell: See up the north you can actually get value for money as werid as it sounds, so the minimum wage cant be that amount
Down south the more ya pay the less you seem to get in return. Not that the shinners live my head rent free mob wanna actually look into that, worse than the worm eating the brain of the lad RFK Jr in the states at this stage
@D Farrell: amazing. Different jurisdictions have different laws and different circumstances! Who’d have thought??
@Patrick Newell: ripped off here.
But still I’ve to work for a rate per day and it’s much less than the new minimum wage. Its E125 per day and that’s a 10 hour a day
@Tommy: No you don’t.
@Ger Whelan: Expect more of this. Regardless of your take. The only question here is Gross? or Net?
@Tommy: of you’re working for that per day then it’s illegal, why not report your enjoyer?
6.3% rise, nice….
I think a lot of people don’t understand a lot of minimum pay workers are in small, family run business without which our product and service landscape would look very different.
The other half works in such a business, everyone works less than 30 hours per week (except for the business owner) and unlike most of the click-copy-and-paste workers we know, they have to work across different sections, covering colleagues’ absences. They are multi-skilled, do commute up to an hour each way (in cars, might I say, not eScooters) and are loyal to the company.
The business owner works 6 days a week, is in his mid70s and takes off one week per year.
Why don’t they move on?
Because they like work.
It’s not all about money.
Some do other work and supplement their wages. Long may it last!!
That’s 40% of what I have received in the last 12 years working for a section 39 company in Healthcare!
80 cent, can’t even buy a bag of tayto
While welcoming the Minimum Wage Increase, it’s now interesting to see the Trade Union Movement now recognised that sector specific challenges are being faced by some Businesses due to the Minimum Wage increase, and other recently introduced Legislation. With that welcome admission now being made it would be interesting to know what measures/supports the Trade Union Movement would suggest the Government should introduce to help, as they now say Businesses should be supported by targeted, and time-limited supports.
The minimum wage to get anybody to work in hospitality in Dublin is closer to 15 euro an hour so the increase today is kind of irrelevant
Business owners are quick to dismiss the benefits of raising the minimum wage.
By increasing the minimum wage, low-paid workers can now have some disposable income. This additional income encourages them to spend more at local businesses, which boosts the local economy. As spending increases, local businesses see more profits and may need to hire more staff to meet demand, thus creating more jobs overall. The increased spending and profits ultimately help cover the higher wages paid to employees, creating a positive cycle of economic growth and prosperity for the community.
80 cent extra hr is not whole lot compared to cost of living.
Should be €15.50 per hour still two low cost of living two high
@Alan Moloney: and prices will rise knowing people will have more money,
@Shane O Mac: well who to blame for this look at your so called government for starters
Most people won’t want to work for the new minimum wage of 13.50 and want an euro extra or 2
@Shane O Mac: cant blame young people leaving. 80 cent extra and cost living is too high here
Great news for anybody on minimum wage ,
but why don’t the reduce the jobseekers in line with the minimum wage increase so the middle class are not always screwed no reason for anyone able to work not going to work.
80 cent @ hour, when a cup of badly scalded “Caffè americano” costs 3.50 euro in a one horse town and five other coffee shops in eye sight. Staffed to the gills with peopled paid goodness know how much on or off the books. This then is only the froth on top of my bile, with not enough to sweeten it.
have your say