Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations. I welcome the publication of this legislation and introducing it swiftly is the right thing to do. It is, however, disappointing to find that the two sides are so far apart, with IBEC stating that no legislation should be considered at all and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, stating the legislation is useless. I see our role as trying to find a middle way to make this legislation meaningful but also to take account of the concerns that may exist in some reasonable and proportionate way. I will ask both parties if we could proceed by way of the Workplace Relations Commission developing a code of practice? That might be a way to explore some of the difficulties that have been put up on the employers' side as being major obstacles that we should not be trying to address in primary legislation. Could we evolve a code of practice which would then become relevant where an employee feels an employer unfairly failed to respect the code in respect of the employee's particular circumstances? That would give some flexibility, rather than trying to enshrine in primary legislation a set of tests or criteria which I think we cannot do in the time available to us. That is my primary question to both sets of witnesses.

IBEC has raised many issues that I understand the principles of. There are issues around data protection, intellectual property, IP, confidentiality, insurance, working time directives, and health and safety. We are now two years into using these practices and while there may be issues to iron out in health and safety, and in some of these codes, has a fair amount of evidence built up as to how employers have, in practice, overcome the issues of insurance, data, IP or confidentiality? We should not be putting up ab initio arguments when we are already two years into using these practices in many workplaces. Can we drill down to a few net issues that need to be resolved from an employer point of view? IBEC and ICTU recognise that health and safety needs more work. Can we identify a few net areas where more work could be done which would, in turn, inform a code which could be drawn up by the Workplace Relations Commission?