Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I could have raised many issues today such as, for example, the United Nations Human Rights Committee's meeting on Ireland held yesterday, the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Palestine and, obviously, the withdrawal of funding for the neurological organisations. However, I am compelled to raise again some of the issues regarding the dispute in Dublin city between the waste management company, Greyhound, and its workforce, which now has been locked out for more than four weeks as this dispute is now in its fifth week. I understand there has been communication between the workers' union, SIPTU, and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation with a view to arranging a meeting to discuss the serious problems in the waste management industry as a whole.

I wish to repeat the point I made during Leaders' Questions two weeks ago, which is that there is an urgent need for an inquiry into pay and working conditions, issues of training, health and safety, maintenance of vehicles, storage of waste and general compliance with environmental regulations and local authority by-laws. This inquiry must involve all the agencies tasked with supervision, namely, the National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, the local authorities, the Irish Waste Management Association and the workers. Is the Taoiseach aware whether this is going ahead and whether this is being driven by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation? That Minister must now examine seriously the need for an employment rights order for this industry. There is intense competition between the companies to cut costs and maximise profits at the expense of wages and proper working conditions in the drive towards competition for the market. If employers get their way, this will become a minimum wage, minimum rights industry with huge implications for health and safety for those working in it. Moreover, a crucial service for public health and the environment is in the hands of cowboy employers.

Does the Taoiseach not consider it to be deplorable that in a modern society, 100 years after the infamous 1913 Lock-out in Dublin, an employer, namely, Greyhound, is prepared to use the same brutal methods to try to crush a unionised workforce? This was a well planned and organised assault by the Buckley brothers by bringing in security on the day and by using so-called agency workers. One of the so-called agencies in-sourced hired operatives at the minimum wage of €8.65 per hour and the main scab organiser, Calin Bogdan, is not a licensed employment agent.

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