Mr. Gerry Light:

Regarding the collective bargaining situation, for many years collective bargaining and centralised bargaining took place with one of the major representative bodies of the licensed trade. They walked away from that a number of years ago, which fragmented the whole sector. Now, you are dealing with a whole host of individual employers and it is much more difficult to get a standardisation of approach in the sector. That is important and the reason why we say "legal obstacles", by which we mean by that is there is much focus now on the whole area of collective bargaining. The Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, high-level group has issued its report around that. We say that if employers continue to interpret the voluntarist nature of our industrial relations systems like that, the State has to step in and put a robust right to statutory collective bargaining rights for workers in any sector, but particularly in the sector we are talking about today.

On the second point regarding the role of other unions and other countries; it does exist and works well. In fact, it worked here in the construction sector for many years, where trade union officials went in, particularly around the area of health and safety. If the State cannot provide it, it must look at other means of providing it. For years, as a member of the Low Pay Commission, I always maintained the view that entitlements are one thing, but unless you have information around those entitlements and an ability to enforce them, they are meaningless. We are aware there are quite a number of vacancies in the WRC, which should be filled immediately. If the State cannot provide that, it should look to other sources and organisations like trade unions, which have experienced trade staff who are able to deal even within the narrow focus of health and safety. Clearly, they would also be able to deal with work and entitlement rights regarding terms and conditions of employment.