Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We are more or less in agreement on these matters. Certainly, we are trying to get to the same place.

On the question of name badges for staff, I have enormous sympathy with what Mr. O'Brien is saying. We are constantly having to advocate for people who are in these difficult situations, but I also am conscious of the other side. That is not in any way to excuse racism, sexism or any type of inappropriate behaviour but I am keeping in mind the difficulty this might present for staff. In the case of some of those difficulties, I am not sure whether any code of conduct will deal with them, because they are to do with staff numbers being cut, increasing demands on individual workers and so on. In the area of housing, for example, it is essentially a no-win situation on both sides of the table, with frustrations abounding in general. The person who has the housing need cannot understand why it cannot be met, while the person on the other side is saying, "I have 50 similar cases, all of which are terrible, so what do you expect me to do?". They should not say things like that, but sometimes they do. It is important that we try to get as much buy-in as possible from staff and their union representatives in addressing these issues, rather than having a situation where we go at it in what looks like a heavy-handed, dictatorial way. I am interested in Mr. O'Brien's view on that.