Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I realise Senator Cullinane has been raising these issues for some time. I raised them myself as a backbencher. I am pleased that I have had the opportunity to try to advance this agenda during the past year and a half. Senator Cullinane has always spoken eloquently and passionately about his interest in this area. We have many things in common in terms of how we would like to see these issues addressed. We differ on some points but that is the nature of debate and discourse.

We are serious about trying to address these issues. This is the first time any government has commissioned a report of this nature to try to address the knowledge gap. The information deficit is going to be important. We continually seek to collect data and information in a structured way. This is something Deputy Tóibín has spoken about in the past as well.

I welcome the publication of the committee report. It is a helpful set of proposals in advancing this agenda. I agree with Senator Cullinane's point. We should all accept that there is a requirement to have a degree of flexibility in the labour market. It is important to give people the opportunity to access work but we must also be conscious of the needs of employers, the vast majority of whom are decent good employers. They see their staff as instrumental to their business and their success. I am keen to put that on the record. However, the difficulty is where these type of arrangements become the norm and when they become exploitative and abusive. That is when we need to say "Stop" and address any deficits there may be in our legislative or regulatory arrangements.

There is the political will to address this issue, which we have managed to get onto the political agenda in a way that was not the case previously.

I am interested in the Senator's views on banded-hour contracts, which he correctly stated were the norm in many analogous EU states. We all know about the issue with elements of the retail trade but there are also good examples in that trade of the use of banded-hour contracts.

We cannot discuss recent improvements in employment legislation or our general approach to ensuring fairness and decency at work without considering the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015, which improved the industrial relations landscape significantly. As a result, there are strong, robust and constitutional collective bargaining laws that form a framework for trade unions and employers to engage and arrive at collective agreements through the Labour Court. The legislation is also clear on the problem of victimisation. Under one of its provisions, no worker can be victimised for holding the ambition to promote collective bargaining in the workplace. This is a significant move.

I am grateful for Senator Cullinane's contributions today and previously. He wants to move towards an improvement in employment legislation, as do the majority of the committee's members and I.