Louise O'Reilly

speaker

191 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 3 Jul

Louise O'Reilly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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Today with David McCullagh · The Gathering · 3 Jul 2026 podcast

Well, there's no need to police it now because the government have just shrugged their shoulders and said, meh, probably won't be passed on and that's fine.

So I think the way to do it would be to start off by creating at the very minimum, and we don't expect a massive amount from the government, but at the very minimum, creating the expectation that it will be passed on.

But I think when the government just shrug their shoulders and say, well, there you go, there are viable businesses who should be passing it on.

And there are also businesses who will benefit for whom it will mean viability and it will mean the maintenance of those jobs.

And when we have events like Stormy Owen and other events, we do see the value of the small rural cafe and the small rural pub because very often the community centre doesn't have the infrastructure to be able to keep going and people will go there to charge their devices, to get a hot cup of tea.

You know, so there is a lot more to this than just simply the VAT cut.

But I think we need to look in the round

at, you know, the industry in general.

Catering is a large part of it.

We need to look at the wages that are paid and the government, instead of publishing a roadmap to get to the living wage, as soon as the programme for government was written, it was very, very clear.

Actually, the roadmap is to ensure that this government most definitely does not get to the living wage, which I think is... Right, but they have increased the minimum wage, which is leading to some protests from employers.

Well, I was a union official, David, for a very, very long time.

I never met a boss yet that was in favour of pay increases.

But that doesn't mean that people don't need them.

They do.

They need them to live.

And the living wage is called the living wage for a reason.

It is what is estimated to be the minimum that you need to live decently on.

So I think instead of, you know, just focusing on one aspect of this, we need to look at it in the round and ensure that there is a proper roadmap to a living wage, which we won't get till we have a new government.

Well, this is the thing.

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