Ms Jean Winters:

With regard to Deputy Calleary's point about protection for the larger employers, I apologise if it has come across like that, but that is certainly not the intention of our submission. We represent contractors of all sizes across all sectors, and in fact the majority of our membership is made up of small and medium enterprises. Many of these small and medium enterprises employ the largest number of workers in the industry. We are certainly not about trying to protect large contractors. I believe, and the federation believes, that having a registered employment order in place in the industry that covers all workers regardless of the size of their employer is the best way to ensure protection for large, medium and small enterprises. That is why we would prefer to see heads 13 and 27 omitted from the legislation.

Head 13 is about the non-application of the Act to family members. In some parts of the country, there could be, for example, a plumbing contractor who employs his sons and they compete for work in their particular town or village in the country. If a registered employment order does not apply to that small firm, it is at an advantage when tendering for work against another firm that might employ the same number of workers - one or two plumbers - if these workers are not family members. The registered employment order will protect small and medium enterprises in exactly the same way it will protect larger contractors because, regardless of the size of the firm, it must still go out and compete for work. That is the nature of the construction industry - contractors must go out there and compete for work. As labour takes up a huge portion of any tender, regardless of the size of the firm, rates and terms and conditions should be universally applicable and should not depend on the size of enterprise.

On Part II, which deals with registered employment agreements, the reason we believe REAs will not be applicable to the industry in general is that they will only be binding on the parties to these agreements. For example, if CIF, representing employers, reached an employment agreement with all the unions involved in the construction industry and registers the agreement, that is fine if contractors who are members of CIF are a party to that agreement. It is binding on them. However, contractors from the North, for example, or contractors who are not members of the federation would have a competitive advantage.

We believe that the registered employment agreements are not applicable to the construction industry, because they are binding on the parties to the agreement only. The alternative, as we see it, and the better system for the industry, is the registered employment orders because they have universal applicability and are not confined purely to the parties to the agreement.

With regard to compliance and whether there are models in other countries, the difficulty we have had in the industry over the years, and particularly during the busy years, was with contractors from the North who might come down to the Republic, carry out their business and then go back to the North. These contractors would not have an office in which the National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, could inspect the records and ensure workers were being paid the appropriate rates and so on. The posting of workers directive was introduced in most other EU member states several years ago. I cannot remember exactly what the date was but it was a number of years ago. I believe there are difficulties in transposing that directive in Ireland. It is not an Act in its own right. We had a difficulty with our Constitution, and with the issue of enforcement, in ensuring that workers from other jurisdictions would get the same terms and conditions. If a worker found that he was not getting the proper rate of pay in the construction industry, where did he bring a case? Did he bring it to the Labour Court here in Ireland, or, if he was, say, a Northern Irish worker, did he go to the equivalent Labour Court in the North? If he came to the Labour Court here and it issued a determination, how could that be enforced if the worker's employer or ex-employer was based in a different jurisdiction? Other European countries have not had this difficulty with the posting of workers directive. I understand the issue is to do with our Constitution. One way around it is that, if contractors working here in the Republic were required to have a base or an office here while they were carrying out work, then NERA, with the proper statutory powers, could visit that office and look to inspect the records to ensure that all workers working in the industry here received the same terms and conditions. That might be a way of sorting that issue out.