She has a weekly wage of £52.75. Her work is dirty, arduous, thankless. Does she get depressed? "I could bottle depressed," laughs Alice O'Gorman, inhaling deeply on another cigarette. "But I tell you, I'm one of the very lucky ones."

She works 12 1/2 hours per week in her job as a contract cleaner in St Mary's Hospital in the Phoenix Park. "Ah," some might say, "so the short hours explain her small take-home pay". But for each of those 12 1/2 hours, she is paid just £4.22 - 18p short of the £4.40 national minimum wage proposed by Mary Harney on Wednesday; 18p short of a figure roundly denounced by union leaders as too low and "out of date".

SIPTU and IMPACT say a national minimum wage should be set at £5 if it is to have any significant impact on the State's 163,000 low-paid - mainly young people and women like Alice.

"I am one of the lucky ones." she says. "I don't start until 10.15 a.m. But there are others where I work who start at 5 in the morning, up out of their beds at 4 and back home to get the kids ready for school. And there's no such thing as unsocial hour payments.

"When I go in I hoover, wash toilets, sluice, mop, buff the wards. Where I am now they are very courteous, but I have worked in places where if there was a grade lower than zero, that'd be us. Contract cleaners - who work hard and do an important job - they tend to be treated with less than respect."

A widow since last July, she has a weekly income, including £77 social welfare and £50 in all from her adult son (19) and daughter (22), of £179.75. If she were working 39 hours a week, it would come to £4.60 an hour. With this she runs a home in Ballyfermot for three adults and her two-year-old grandson.

"I'm not working for foreign holidays. I'm working for the bare essentials. Work pays the bills and the rest buys food. I'd buy a sack of potatoes every two weeks, and a lot of bread, milk, cereals. Sure, I have a growing son."

She doesn't go on holidays, apart from the odd trip to Birmingham to see her sister-in-law, for which her children, nieces and nephews pay. The last time she ate out was for her daughter's 21st birthday, two years ago.

"It was in Joel's, on the Naas Road. Lovely."

Alice is just one of thousands of contract cleaners in Dublin, of some 25,000 throughout the State and an estimated 163,000 low-paid workers across the State who make up 13.5 per cent of the workforce. The sectors in which they are concentrated, as identified by the main trade unions, are the predictable clothing industry, hairdressing, hotel and catering work and security, as well as in race-courses, car parks, garage forecourts.

In general, they are either earning less than £200 for a 39-hour week, or are working up to 70 hours to make what most would consider a decent living.

SIPTU names businesses around the State where workers, as of October 1st last year, were paid as little as £140.59 for a 39-hour week. While a spokesman for SIPTU described the introduction of a minimum wage as "vital", there is dissent.

IBEC and the Small Firms' Association regard the development as "extremely worrying".

Pat Delaney, director of the SFA, said his organisation was "implacably opposed" to the measure. He said it would mean a rise in the national wage bill of 2 per cent and a loss of "about 14,000 jobs".

It would also mean the creation of a potential 15,000 jobs over the next three years would be jeopardised, he said.

"And it will be those at the margin who will lose their jobs, and those who most need them."

Huge job losses in the clothing industry have occurred because Irish manufacturers could not afford wages in this State, he said.

When asked whether Irish factory workers should be paid similar wages to factory workers in the Far East and north Africa, he said efficiency and competition were "the reality".

John King, secretary of the women workers' branch of SIPTU, which represents Alice, welcomes the fact that the principle of a statutory minimum wage has been accepted.

However, he says it will do little good if social welfare allowances are not changed. From April 1st, once the dependent spouse earns over £70 a week, the main social welfare claimant will see a reduction in their welfare. Mr King welcomes this but says the introduction of a minimum wage without changes to the allowances may, for many, mean simply that they reach that threshold sooner.

Mary Harney's Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment says it has no power to make changes to the social welfare system, while the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs says the only changes planned are those due to come into effect on April 1st.

"The system is pushing people into the black economy," says Alice. "I doubt the minimum wage will make a huge difference to my spending power. I'd love to be able to look at my money and not have to say it'll all go on just living. I'd love to have a bit to go to the sale in Dunnes. But there you go. Welcome to the real world."