Ms Una Fitzpatrick:

Ireland has a strong voluntarist industrial relations framework. This has been effective in times of economic growth and recession. We feel it delivers industrial peace and stability. Reform of this legislation has been introduced, with the sectoral employment orders affirming the roles of the joint labour committees and registering employment agreements. The International Labour Organization conventions, which address collective bargaining, rightly focus on the fact that engagement should be voluntary. In parallel, the reforms of the Industrial Relations Act in Ireland has introduced a significant body of statutory employment rights governing everything from working hours, contracts, statutory leave and minimum wage to sick pay and work-life balance, with further legislation pending on auto-enrolment pensions, to name but a few. It is increasingly difficult to identify traditional areas of collective negotiation that are not now regulated by the State. IBEC has been working progressively with the trade union movement under the auspices of the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, collective bargaining group to promote and address any obstacles to collective bargaining engagement in our current framework. This work has proposed a set of agreed recommendations that demonstrate the best aspects of our industrial relations systems, the respect and foresight to recognise the success of the voluntarist model with its strong mix of collective and direct engagement, underpinned by a highly developed dispute resolution mechanism.