Mr. Evan Cullen:

I confirm that female pilots have told me that they have terminated pregnancies because they had no entitlement to maternity leave and, therefore, no guarantee of having jobs when they returned. The attitude of the Government is bizarre. Some members of the Government state that there should not be bogus self-employment, yet others believe in "innovative employment models" in order to keep costs down and ensure that Ireland remains competitive. Deputy Paul Murphy described the way that the Minister for Finance answered the question. It is interesting that the latter is a former Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, so while the totality of his answer is probably correct, he would know what is going on in aviation.

The airlines have told us privately that they are unhappy with this practice but they are being forced to engage in it because there is not a level playing field. Airlines that carry the full social cost of direct employees will not be able to compete with airlines that engage substantially in this practice.

I will give a classic example of how the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport operates. It recently granted a permit to Ethiopian Airlines to operate between Dublin and Madrid. All of the people who are employed on that aircraft are based in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with an Ethiopian labour cost base but they are competing directly with workers in Aer Lingus and Ryanair who are on an EU labour cost base. That the Department has no difficulty with that illustrates its attitude. There are currently 39 flights a week between Dublin and Madrid being operated by EU airlines. I have no problem with Ethiopian Airlines flying from Addis Ababa into Dublin and returning to Ethiopia but I have a problem with the company competing with us by flying in the European Union because we have an EU cost base.

For many years we have brought these issues to the attention of the Revenue Commissioners but they have done nothing. For this reason, I have concluded that they do not care.