Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

Employment rights legislation has an important role to play in promoting labour market stability. The economic benefits of employment security and agreed employment relationships in terms of co-operative work place relations, greater internal flexibility, acceptance of technological change, cumulative skills acquisition and greater incentive for investment in human resources are widely recognised and accepted.

I note that the Dáil is invited to condemn the replacement of existing workers who benefit from trade union pay rates with what are called "vulnerable" migrant workers. While not supporting the stance of the company in this matter, not all incoming workers can be described as "vulnerable" simply because they are working outside their country of origin. This is far too broad an assumption. While the term "migrant worker" is used in Ireland to describe virtually all workers from overseas, when questioned, people tend not to think of German, Italian, American or British nationals working in Ireland as migrant workers. Very many thousands of workers from overseas are in well-paid employment in the Irish economy. We cannot assume that everybody from overseas is vulnerable simply because they propose to work outside their own country. The Irish experience alone should provide ample evidence of that. We need to encourage workers to come from other countries and will continue to do so as it is important for the growth of employment here.

From the information made available to us of what the company proposes, any replacement workers in Irish Ferries are likely to be EU nationals, probably from the new member states. If such persons want to work outside their own country, they are free to seek work in Ireland, Sweden and the UK without restriction. Many thousands have availed of this opportunity. Many others have the possibility of seeking entry to specific occupations in other member states where the governments of those member states have opted to continue to regulate entry to their domestic labour market.

However, I should point out that the legal advice received regarding foreign-registered ships indicates that as a general rule the flag state, the state where the ship is registered, has the exclusive right to exercise legislative and enforcement jurisdiction over its ships on the high sea. That advice was made known to the Dáil in the middle of last year and everybody was aware of it. From the Government's perspective, there would be no question of granting work permits to an employer in a case like this to facilitate the bringing in of workers from outside the broader European Economic Area.

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