I request all Members please to adhere to the time allocated. We are sitting very late each evening and a time overrun at this stage means we will be even later. I call Deputy McDonald.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, has withdrawn from the Low Pay Commission. Its general secretary, Patricia King, stated that it did so because the commission was not prepared to go beyond an increase of 1% in the minimum wage for 2021. A 1% increase would mean an increase of 10 cent an hour for the workers affected - the thousands of low-paid workers who have kept us going during this pandemic. Overnight, when the going got tough, many of those workers were classified as essential. When the chips were down it was not to the high rollers, bankers, corporate landlords or millionaire executives that we turned; no, in our time of need, it was to retail workers who stock our shelves, delivery van drivers, supply chain workers, carers and cleaners that we turned.

These workers were essential, these workers are essential and these workers have always been essential. They were commended and cheered, but they cannot feed their children with applause and flowery rhetoric. They rely on a meaningful increase in the minimum wage to pay their bills, rents and mortgages. Those workers need decent pay - a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. There is something very wrong when members of a Low Pay Commission cannot agree to a meaningful increase for low paid workers, workers who were rightly described as heroes only a few short weeks ago.

One in five workers is a low-paid worker in Ireland, and 100,000 people at work live in poverty. That is the reality. The Taoiseach and his Government have turned their backs on these workers. The new employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, locks 153,000 of the lowest paid workers out and the Government has been put at risk of losing their jobs. It has left their employers in a terrible position, because they do not have the money or resources to pay the very modest wages. The Government, therefore, has hurt not only low-paid workers but also businesses. The pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, has also been cut, a move certain to drive more workers and households into debt and distress, and this has been done at a time tens of thousands of workers remain out of work because of the Covid-19 crisis.

To summarise the situation, since 1 September, over the past three weeks, the Government has locked 153,000 of the lowest paid workers out of the EWSS, the PUP has been cut for those losing their jobs because of Government-imposed public health restrictions, and now we have a Low Pay Commission that will not deal with low pay. Is this the Taoiseach's version of "we are all in this together"? I ask that because it strikes me that all this has the fingerprints of the Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Varadkar, and Fine Gael all over it. What does the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, propose to do to reverse these absolutely disastrous decisions that will injure and hurt low-paid workers and their families?

It is fundamentally wrong of the Deputy to attempt to make political capital out of a decision of the independent Low Pay Commission, which is not dictated to or influenced by the Government. In fact, the past five recommendations from the commission have been accepted by the Government. The Government supports low-paid workers. We have the fourth-highest minimum wage in European systems with a statutory minimum wage.

Right now, it is an extraordinary political charge for the Deputy to make about the Government not supporting low-paid workers. Under the EWSS, 350,000 workers will be supported by the State, as it continues. More than 200,000 workers are supported by the PUP, and a further 200,000 are supported on the live register. Approximately 750,000 workers, therefore, are still being supported by the State, right now, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To try to create the impression, therefore, that the Government is out to get people is outrageous in the context of an unprecedented intervention by the Government and the State to support workers at all levels, to support sectors and to do so in a sustainable way that can keep us going right throughout 2021. That is what the Government has been about. I regret the fact that ICTU has pulled out of the Low Pay Commission. I understand its reasons. It wants an increase of 20 cent in the minimum wage as opposed to 10 cent. I hope ICTU can rejoin the commission, because all of us in the House agree with an independent statutory body to decide on low pay.

Regarding the minimum wage, many employers are now in significant difficulty and the Deputy must know that. That is why the Government is supporting so many employers under the EWSS. Deputy McDonald and I do not pay the minimum wage; employers in small-to-medium-sized businesses do. They are under pressure, but, thankfully, many are proving resilient, even in the teeth of Covid-19. We must continue to support them because, fundamentally, what the Government wants to do is support people on low incomes and support workers, but also to create new employment opportunities. Substantial funding was put aside in the form of a wide range of placements, including via Skillnet Ireland, Springboard, the apprenticeship incentivisation scheme and additional third level places, to create more than 30,000 new places that can allow people to reorient and help them to get employment in areas such as retrofitting and similar areas where the State can spend additional capital funding to create employment and work.

I heard what Patricia King, the head of Congress, said, and I have great respect for the work ICTU does on fairness and in looking after low-paid workers. There will, obviously, be further engagement between the Government and ICTU regarding this matter, but it also has to be acknowledged that the Government, recognising the independence of the Low Pay Commission, has accepted all of its recommendations since 2016. We continue, however, to support workers through the various schemes we have developed and to keep as many jobs going as we possibly can in this society and economy.

The only thing that is extraordinary is the Taoiseach's extraordinary lack of fairness and his even more extraordinary lack of self-awareness in this regard. Let us rehearse the facts again. The Government's new wage subsidy scheme excludes 153,000 workers who earn €151 a week or less. They are not eligible and are excluded from the scheme. That hurts those workers, it hurts their employers and the Government has left them out in the cold, very deliberately. That is a fact. The Government has also cut the PUP, so another 150,000 or more workers are down €50 or €100 a week. That is also a fact. That hurts those workers and their families, and now we have a Low Pay Commission that is not minded to deal in any acceptable way with the issue of low pay.

Does the Taoiseach, therefore, agree with ICTU that the minimum increase to the minimum wage ought to be 20 cent an hour or more? Will he move beyond his sort of delusional reverie and into the real world with us and address those low-paid workers excluded from the Government's wage subsidy scheme and those who will be hurt by the changes to PUP? Will the Taoiseach tell those workers how he is going to correct for those very bad decisions?

The Deputy uses every situation to tell untruths, rather than the truth, about the reality out there.

She is fundamentally wrong about the wage subsidy scheme. That scheme is about employers who employ people. The Deputy knows that there are various formulas designed to facilitate, for example, employers whose turnover has dropped to 70% of the previous year and so on. The Deputy deliberately distorts what has been an effective and unprecedented intervention in the labour market to protect employers, enterprises and workers. As I said, it is expected that 350,000 people will benefit from the scheme. Can the Deputy not acknowledge that a substantial and unprecedented intervention has been made by the State on behalf of taxpayers to support employment? Why does the Deputy always feel the need to distort facts and, if you like, smear people who are definitely trying to do their best? She does it all the time for political advantage.

We extended the pandemic unemployment payment until the middle of next year and did so quicker than any other European country. We made that decision. The rates have come down but they are closely proximate to what people would have been earning before they were laid off.

No.

The Taoiseach, without interruption.

It is open now for the first time to new entrants and seasonal workers.

The Deputy knows that the Low Pay Commission is not the Government. It is an independent statutory body and the Deputy knows that, yet she came in here this morning trying to pretend that the Low Pay Commission is an arm of the Government. It is not. It is an independent body set up by this Oireachtas, including the Deputy. She makes political charges when it suits her and does not deal with reality.

On a point of order, the Taoiseach has responded in the manner he has. I just have to say-----

That is not a point of order.

That is not a point of order.

I know that we do not have a fact-checking facility for the Oireachtas but the facts that I set out about the wage subsidy scheme and the pandemic unemployment payment-----

That is not a point of order. That is an abuse of the House.

The Deputy has made her point.

-----are accurate and I would like that recorded on the record of the Dáil. I do not appreciate being accused of laying untruths before the House. That is not true.