Just under 200,000 workers across a wide range of sectors are set to get a mandatory pay increase today – as Ireland’s Minimum Wage rate goes up by 80c to €13.50 per hour.
From today, a full-time worker receiving minimum wage will now earn an additional €30 a week or €1,600 across the year (that is before tax).
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the standard pay rate, which first came in back in the year 2000. Recent increases have meant that the rate has effectively increased by just over a third since 2020.
However, while workers across many sectors will be welcoming this increase today, groups representing the hospitality and small business sectors have warned that this is just the latest in a series of pay and tax related increases. And they are warning that costs could be passed on to consumers in the long run.
There is also dissatisfaction amongst Ireland’s trade unions, with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) pointing out that even after this increase, the minimum wage is still worth less than 60% of average earnings – the benchmark in the campaign for the 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”.
“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.”
The minimum wage increase is just one of a raft of changes in social welfare payments and personal taxation as part of Budget 2025.