Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for interrupting but we are under pressure as regards time. Let us talk about meat factory workers. Some 90% of workers in meat plants have no sick pay. Irish meat plant operatives work an average of 4.7 weeks per year more than their EU counterparts and they rank bottom of the list on actual hourly wages received. Those are statistics from the SIPTU trade union. My point is that the Department set this wage without any recourse to the outside world. One of the recommendations from this committee previously was that the Department would involve bodies like the Labour Court so we could have a public airing of these terms and conditions. The reason that is so important, and I can speak personally in this regard, is that meat factory workers in many cases have no say whatsoever at work, they have no recourse to union representation in two thirds of the factories and they are very open to exploitation. Can Ms Ward please address the issue of the lack of transparency in terms of that wage-setting process and the extraordinarily low levels of pay on offer for those workers?