Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. A number of issues have emerged from what the Minister said. The idea here is to ensure healthy companies live up to their commitments. In defining healthy companies, we used in our amendment the wording from the OECD report, which pointed out that Ireland was out of sync with other countries. Our amendment uses the OECD term "has positive net revenues". We have to take into account the day-to-day running of the company. We do not want a company to close, impose reduced hours or redundancies on a workforce or cut wages. That is not the intention. However, there is a commitment that needs to be lived up to and "positive net revenues" suggests there is a formula of words involved.

This is not just an Irish issue. The parent company could be in another EU member state and there is a responsibility across the EU on profitable companies not to use the current crisis as an excuse to get out of something which they deem to be a burden on them into the future. We have seen companies examining how to get out of this. I include the ESB in those companies that are examining how to put this liability off their balance sheet and change it to a defined contribution scheme or another pension scheme. It is not attractive for a company to have a defined benefit scheme on their books if they are planning to be taken over, up for sale or whatever.

I urge the Minister to look at this over the next week to see if a formula of words can be put into this Bill which ensures this liability is imposed on companies and they cannot walk away. If there is no clear legal obligation preventing healthy employers from walking away, we will find over the next while that more of those 803 defined benefit schemes will see their employers, regardless of whether they are in financial strife, looking at how they can shirk that responsibility. The people who are legally exposed when a defined benefit scheme becomes insolvent are the workers, the pensioners, and the State to some extent if both go south. The workers and pensioners also include the deferred pensioners, who are not mentioned in this Bill. It is to be hoped we will get an opportunity to deal specifically with that in one of these sections, because that is an area of concern.

If this issue is not addressed, it will end up clogging up the industrial relations network, as it has done. It also has the potential to increase the number of industrial disputes. The most recent disputes in Marks & Spencer and the ESB were tied to a promise of a defined benefit scheme. The disputes were not about increased wages, which happened in the past, or for better conditions of work, or for increased hours. They were about ensuring the promise made to them in a contract of employment was honoured. We are not addressing it when we address the pension scheme wind-ups, nor are we ensuring the remaining 800 defined benefit schemes are complied with while those companies have positive net revenues, as per my amendment and the OECD report.