Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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On the issue of connectivity, the Tánaiste may be aware of this, but just in case, the route from Dublin Airport to Los Angeles was lost during the economic crash. We could be here all day talking about how that happened and who is responsible, but it was lost in any event and it took eight years to get it back. The issue of connectivity is centrally connected to the issue of jobs. The Tánaiste and I represent neighbouring constituencies. Dublin Airport is located in my constituency and it is right beside the Taoiseach's constituency. We know how important the aviation jobs are. I echo the issues that were raised today with regard to the need for a plan. There needs to be a real sense of urgency about this because what could be lost in the space of a couple of months could take years to be recovered. There is a genuine fear. It is not just about the jobs, although they are so important, it is also about connectivity. I do not want to go through it but wanted to put it into the Tánaiste's head that when a route is lost, you lose it quickly and get it back really slowly. Anyone involved in aviation could tell you that.

I will go back to the issue of content moderators. The discussion that we are having is interesting and welcome because this is a new type of work. It is hazardous work, a point which was made previously. It is a type of work that just did not exist when I was young. It requires its own set of guidelines. A joint labour committee may be an interesting way to approach it and there may be other ways. Separate to it being something new, exotic and interesting, we have the issue of these non-disclosure agreements. Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin from the Communication Workers Union, which does brilliant work in this space along with Foxglove, cited the chilling effect that these non-disclosure agreements have. Your boss might give you an agreement, with two minutes to read and sign it, and it might be 80 pages long.

You sign it because, quite frankly, you have looked at the news and you see the level of youth unemployment coming at you and you think, Jesus I need this job, so you sign the contract. It is taken from you and then used against you. You do not have a copy of it, but all you know is that you are constantly prevented from raising issues and having that contract held over you. It is used as a tool against workers.

It appears this is not a breach of employment law, and my read of it is that it is not, although employees are entitled to information, but it should be because it is being used against them. Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin used the phrase "the chilling effect". What that means in practice is that workers are afraid to raise concerns. I fully appreciate that the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, exists, and in the course of my other work I had dealings with the HSA. I know there is voluntarist machinery available that people can use, but the Minister must accept these people exist in an area that is somewhat outside of the normal industrial relations sphere and these agreements are being used to keep the workers in a situation whereby they are afraid to get organised, come together and challenge their employer.

This is linked to the next issue I want to raise with the Minister, which is youth unemployment. We know the people who suffered the most during the economic crash, as in, for the longest, and I am not making a hierarchy of people who were battered by what was done to the economy but in terms of the sustained impact, youth unemployment took the longest to recover. Is the Minister amenable to working on a cross-party basis to ensure that NDAs can be nullified? We very often do that although people never see it happening. There is a role for NDAs in some very discrete instances, but the indiscriminate use of them as a mechanism to control workers is not good and it should not be happening.

Will there be a dedicated section on youth unemployment in the national economic recovery plan? All of the unemployment that will arise out of the pandemic will be tough to deal with, but we must learn the lesson from the previous crash in that youth unemployment was sustained at a higher rate for longer than in other age groups.