Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentation. It is clear that we need legislation on this. I do not think we should rush it. We should look for submissions, however, because the devil is in the detail. When Mr. Hayes says that this could become the model across Europe, we want to make sure that it is a good model. There is something that I think is worth exploring further. Under the model Mr. Hayes is proposing for how we resolve disputes, the WRC and then the Labour Court, it seems to be a significant problem that there would be no mechanism for costs to be awarded. We are talking about some of the biggest corporations in the world, with practically limitless resources in terms of legal advice and so on, up against workers who would not be able to avail of similar resources. Is that not a significant problem and precisely why the companies that Mr. Hayes works with would like this sort of model whereby there would be a big mismatch between the workers resources and those of the employers on the other side?