Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Many areas have been covered already so I will not refer to them. I thank our guests for attending. Many Opposition Deputies have been raising this issue for a long time. The shutter has been pulled down. It is similar to what is done at The Ivy - the curtains are pulled shut - every time people go in to protest tip theft. I have met Mr. Cullen before and he said then what he has also explained here. I felt that IALPA had to come to a public forum such as this in order to be able to make that known. I hope what he stated will have a substantial impact in the media, especially the point about the position that women have found themselves in because of what is involved here and the way the association has been treated in recent years. It has been stated that companies have been able to use Ireland as a tax haven. Accountants here are facilitating such behaviour. This is a serious matter. I will not hesitate to push this issue as much as possible in order to try to deal with it. We should work with our guests in respect of it, rather than having people running off and doing their own thing.

I have been in contact with Martin McMahon. Many people know his name. He has met the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to discuss bogus self-employment and has explained what has happened over the past 20 years. This committee is trying to raise that to a level where it is not all smoke and mirrors and it is not seen as the small figure that we are led to believe by the officials. It is bigger than that and it is growing, especially among English language teachers. I have been a trade union activist all my life. I recall that teachers and pilots had well-paid jobs 20 years ago and that they were respected and had trade union rights. Pilots were full-time and permanent employees. Construction workers were directly employed and had reasonably good conditions and pay. In the past 20 years, under social partnership and the Industrial Relations Act, we have seen a rowing back in respect of workers' rights to the point where it is nearly like 1916, with people going down to the docks to look for work and being afraid to say anything in case they do not get that work.

I hope that this report will have resonance in society and that it will encourage workers to organise and fight back because that is what will have to be done. When I talked to workers in The Ivy, they were afraid to say anything. There are frequent audiovisual checks on them. The company has stooges come in to ask staff questions in order to try to catch them out. Workers are operating in a very difficult environment. In an international context, this is what has been happening to pilots in recent years but it has not received the attention it needs and neither has it been addressed. This committee has to use its authority to try to expose this type of behaviour and, as the Chairman indicated, take action in respect of it prior to the summer recess.

In the context of the impact on pilots and the way in which some of these companies have been set up, how cunning are those involved in terms of how they have thought up ways to make workers vulnerable and deny them the decent pay, maternity rights and sick pay rights to which they are entitled.