Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am not suggesting for a moment that businesses should not rightfully access these supports if they need them but, in the same vein, if they are accessing supports and still enforcing pay cuts or redundancies, there should surely be some conditionality in the scheme to at least try to prevent that or about the timing of that. Ultimately, while we are trying to save businesses, saving jobs has to be a priority as well. Jobs should not go under this winter. The Labour Party would like to see much greater conditionality in the scheme.

I agree with Deputy Shanahan on procurement because it is not just about supporting indigenous business but also about supporting those businesses that treat their workers decently. A company with a State contract in the Chief State Solicitor's office has taken the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to court. It has had an injunction placed on the Department preventing it from signing the wage agreement for security workers into law. These are low-wage workers. This happened at the end of August. The State did not enter a defence or did not try to contest the injunction. As of ten days ago, the State has effectively sat on its hands and done nothing. We have asked the Minister of State, Deputy English, what is happening on this. He tells us he cannot say anything. Frankly, it is not good enough that the State would not contest an injunction-----