THE chairman of Louth County Council has been under severe criticism from immigrants' and workers' groups over his call for lower pay for unskilled immigrants than for Irish people.Fianna Fail at a national level moved swiftly to disassociate itself from sentiments expressed by Jimmy Mulroy when he said workers from Eastern European countries such as Lithuania can get by on less than their counterparts.He caused outrage among critics when he suggested wages for migrant workers should reflect the lower cost of living in their home countries.Mulroy said Irish workers needed around $18.50 an hour to live, while people from Lithuania were "doing very well" on $12.50 an hour. That's about 50 cents an hour below the legal minimum.Mulroy, who runs his own electrical contracting business, was speaking during a debate at the council on the abuse of workers by some employment agencies. He claimed later that for many Eastern European workers a weekly wage at, say, $15 an hour was the equivalent of a month's pay back home.But Peter McLoone of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions described Mulroy's comments as "nonsense" and "absurd.""We would not accept it for our own people if they were going to work abroad. This is an attempt to justify exploitation and there are no circumstances in which you can do that," McLoone said.Another union leader said Mulroy's sentiments were "absolutely shocking and disgusting." They promoted the right of bosses to exploit migrant workers.Niall Crowley, CEO of the Equality Authority, said Mulroy's proposal ran counter to one of the main planks of equality legislation.Crowley added, "This is an unfortunate intervention in a context where we know there are high levels of exploitation involving migrant workers." He stressed that a person's wage could not be determined on the basis of their living expenses, but had to be determined by the work they did.One councilor told Mulroy during the debate, "Migrant workers do not fly home at night. If they live and work here they should get the same money as Irish workers."Mulroy's party, Fianna Fail, said in a statement that it did not support the remarks in any way. The statement added, "We have always adopted a welcome approach to people coming into Ireland, who play an important role in the development of our economy."The meeting heard that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had detected 296 incidents in the last three years where people employed by an agency were paid under the minimum wage.