David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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The posting of workers directive relates to workers in a firm who are temporarily transferred between member states in order to fulfil contract work. The directive is to ensure that workers receive the minimum protections in the state in which they are working and is intended to circumvent the movement of cheap labour and the race to the bottom. The problem in this State is that the minimum protection would be the minimum wage. At the moment the registered employment agreements, REA, are in abeyance and are not replaced by any collective agreements. For example, some construction workers and local contractors and workers might find themselves protected by the minimum wage but not by the agreed rates which were agreed under the REAs. This is a concern.

Article 9 has more or less split opinion among member states into two groups, one of which is comprised of Germany, Belgium, Italy and France. This group is in favour of a regime that would leave each of the member states free to impose any national controls on service providers. The second group is led by the UK and this State seems to support that group's policy of giving the European Commission a strong role in ensuring that measures adopted by the member state are compatible with EU law.

Will the Government move to support the position that member states should have the freedom to impose national controls? Can the Government move to place these collective agreements back on a legislative footing? This would give proper minimum protections and a standard or agreed protection for those who work in the construction sector.

Article 12 proposes the mandatory introduction of a concept of joint and several liability to subcontracting contract arrangements in the construction sector. Why is Ireland supporting this proposal? If it is uniformly applied across the EU, will this provide a level playing field with regard to protection for workers?

The EU semester is the economic planning process for the EU and member states. The assessment by the EU sets out a number of growth and target figures for this State. It is interesting that with regard to 2014 it forecasts GDP growth of 1.7% and inflation of 0.9% but that unemployment will fall to 12.3%. For 2015 it forecasts GDP growth at 2.5%, 1.2% inflation and unemployment down 11.7%. It would seem that the figures and the targets forecast indicated that we will have very modest growth, that inflation will still be with, yet there will be but very ambitious figures regarding employment. Something is not quite right. I wonder are the unemployment figures and the targets factoring in more emigration or low value work. There is a forecast for inflation to remain and very modest GDP growth levels but much more ambitious targets for reducing unemployment. I ask the Minister to clarify.