Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank our guests for their fulsome presentation and answers. I hope that trend will continue with the question I am going to ask. I have the raised the issue of European works councils both at this committee and via Seanad Commencement matters on a number of occasions but have had no satisfactory answers to date. Infringement proceeding INFR(2022)4021 from the European Commission in 2022 states:

The Commission has identified a number of shortcomings in Irish legislation, which fails to guarantee the right of workers' representatives, the Special Negotiating Body ... or the European Works Council to go to a national court over disputes related to breaches of the rights and obligations under this Directive.

This has been ongoing for over 12 months. Every time I raise the matter, I have been completely blanked by the Department and the Minister. I have a simple question: can the witnesses tell us what is happening? Can they tell us what is going on, how the Department is dealing with these infringement procedures and what the response will be? In particular, can they explain why the Department has to date refused to take up the very sensible suggestion by Mr. Kevin Duffy, former chair of the Labour Court, on how to deal with this issue? There was a consensus at our hearings, that is, to amend the existing legislation to include access to the WRC and the Labour Court to help resolve disputes relating to European works councils. I thank the witnesses.