Sir, I appeal to the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, to reconsider her proposals to restrict youth participation in the workforce. In the past the Minister has made commendable efforts to prevent the Government derogating from EU directives on holiday rights and on health and safety protection for workers, but on this occasion I feel that her actions are indefensible.
For many young people in second level education, part time and summer work are necessary to remain in school. The Minister assumes that parents and guardians shall be able to mysteriously generate and reallocate financial resources to the young.
The implications for third level students are particularly distressing. Not many young people would share the Minister's apparent faith in the banking system providing long term survival loans. Nor do I see the moral premises upon which these proposals are based for they deny the specifically human character of the youth. Young people are not merely biological outputs of parents, objectifiable lumps of flesh to be stored in third level education for a specified length of time. They are rational subjects and these proposals shall damage the full dimensionality of their existence through destroying their human autonomy. Student poverty is the problem, not the students means of addressing it. I urge the Minister to reconsider. Yours etc., Raheny Road, Raheny, Dublin 5.