Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This meeting has been convened for the purpose of consideration by this committee of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was referred to the select committee by order of the Dáil on 11 June. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Gerald Nash, who has responsibility for business and employment, and his officials to the meeting. Before we begin, I ask members to switch their phones to airplane safe or flight mode, depending on their device. It is not enough to put them on silent mode as this will maintain the level of interference from the committee rooms and impacts negatively on the broadcast. There are 29 amendments tabled to the Bill. It is intended that we will consider this Bill until we conclude Committee Stage today. Is this agreed? Agreed. We will proceed through the Bill and if members wish to suspend for 15 minutes at a later stage, we can do so.

I refer members to the list of amendments grouped for the purposes of debate, which has been circulated. We will now proceed to the consideration of the Bill.