Mr. Owen Reidy:

I am happy to. I should say that the directive does not tell us that we have to go further than existing public procurement, but it does not prohibit us which is the point we are trying to make. The point about "should they want it" relates to the point I was making earlier about volunteers not conscripts. The UCD research by Geary and Belizon clearly showed that 44% of workers not in a union want one. In the private sector that is probably about 900,000 workers which is very significant. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, the next generation of workers, it is two thirds. Ireland is unique in that there is an institutional impediment for workers who wish to access collective bargaining via a trade union. It is exclusively in the gift of the private sector employer. As I mentioned in the submission, whether we organise 20%, 50% or 90% of a workplace, the employer effectively says "Yes" or "No". We use our power of persuasion to try to persuade them to engage. If they do not do that, we have to resort to a strike. We can go to the WRC and the Labour Court and get a piece of paper that is binding on us after a year that says the employer should engage with the union, but it is not binding on the employer; the employer can literally drop that.

If the State is required to be an enabler and promoter of collective bargaining, why does the State not use public procurement as a lever to do that? It is not telling employers they must have collective bargaining to be involved in public procurement. It is telling them they must be able to demonstrate they have not denied their workers access to collective bargaining should they wish to have it. It is a positive as opposed to a negative.