James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and the witnesses. I commend the trade union representatives appearing before the committee on their efforts, not just in respect of this issue but on many others down the years. Some may be aware that I used to be a branch secretary for a number of years in a workplace in the Unite trade union, so I support and have sympathy for and an awareness of the work the representatives do.

I wish to put my questions in context. Since I am a representative from the lockdown counties as they are now known, I will briefly recap what has happened in the past week in Kildare, Laois and Offaly and the impact it has had upon businesses. Small businesses, which are employers in their own right, had just picked up the pieces and were beginning to get off the ground again in terms of trading, restoring consumer confidence as well as their own in their operations, bringing workers back into their workplaces and investing in PPE, screens and so on.

Perishable stocks, which were bought in for what they hoped was the remaining part of the tourism season, are now written off and wiped out. I refer to not only those businesses which have been forced to close but the businesses around them, such as fashion boutiques and retailers, which are seeing such a plummet in footfall. That is the impact it has had on the business community. In terms of destination shopping venues, such as Naas and Kildare Village, nobody is coming in from outside because they are not allowed to do so and there has been a huge knock-on effect on local businesses and the local economy.

In terms of people who feel they have done everything right - they have worn their masks, they have minded themselves, they have stayed indoors, they have social distanced and all the rest of it - any chance of a staycation has gone. Any chance of family breaks are gone. By and large, people have cancelled en masse. Not only are there all the implications but they themselves cannot even get away. That is psychologically damaging. That is a huge blow to the county. I suppose what really compounds it is the view that outbreaks are concentrated on the meat plants. There are particular clusters but three counties are paying the price for three or four plants.

There is a number of boundary conditions, etc., which I do not have time to go into. There are certain estates, for instance, Kilmalum in Blessington, where the back of the cul-de-sac is in Kildare and to get out of the estate in the morning, people have got to break the law because of the way the lockdown was done. In any event, I want to move on to questions to the witnesses.

I read all the submissions this morning and thank the witnesses for the presentation today. The State put in place a number of supports to help workers and help the wider economy and the wider society during the pandemic but it strikes me that these have not been applied, or that we have not been able to apply them, in the sector. We heard about temporary accommodation and about accommodation issues. Despite there being an eviction ban in place, we saw that workers were forced to move from one place to another and often cohabit. We saw workers afraid to take sick leave and afraid to phone in sick despite there being the pandemic payment and temporary wage support schemes. It strikes me, as a general rule, that many of the State supports were not available, whether through ignorance, lack of awareness or possibly lack of promotion within those workplaces, and all those issues must be examined.

I will home in on one issue because Ms Patricia King has mentioned this. This is the notification of a workplace disease, the definition of personal injury and the idea that if somebody trips on a floorboard or injuries himself or herself on a piece of machinery in a factory, that is notifiable to the Health and Safety Authority. If somebody presents with coronavirus or another infectious disease, that is not. What we have heard Ms King and others say today and in recent days is that the plethora of sanctions, inspections and powers that would kick in were that in that statutory instrument and were part of the Health and Safety Authority framework would be there and the power of the State could be brought to bear but because this disease is not listed as a notifiable illness, that does not happen. I studied the regulations again this morning. When I see the 2016 regulations - we have heard that the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment could make a one-line change to those regulations to introduce infectious disease or coronavirus as a notifiable illness - it was there previously in the 2011 and 2007 regulations. In the 2016 regulations, it was deliberately taken out. Turning to page 3 of those regulations, I see that ""personal injury" does not include any disease, occupational illness or any impairment of mental condition". That is the real scandal here, not that it is not there at present which, of course, it should be, but that it was previously there and was removed. I would ask for the witnesses' opinion on that.