Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that Chinese walls exist within the Government and, naturally, they should but these are State-funded organisations. I will not refer to any one specifically but they think that there will be no comeback for them other than that which the workers will do by way of industrial action. We should do everything that we can to avoid employees having no option but industrial action. A recognition dispute in the private sector is par for the course and trade unions will deal with those. A recognition dispute in the community, voluntary or semi-State sector should be relatively unheard of. There is a partnership approach and we could spend all day debating how that fares for workers but there is a partnership approach, particularly in the public service. I cannot understand why these organisations, and I am not referring to any one in particular, feel that they can walk away from third-party recommendations, shrug their shoulders and they know that there is going to be no comeback. They do not even get a letter from the relevant Minister to ask them to engage and work with the representatives that the workers have chosen to represent them. It is very poor form that we repeatedly get requests from workers where an award has been made and the employer simply says that he or she is not implementing that. That is a recipe for industrial chaos when we do not need that.