Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I welcome this motion and commend my Independent colleagues for having tabled it. It is straight, direct and appropriate to the extraordinary situation we are facing. As my constituency colleague Deputy Tony Dempsey said, those of us in Wexford have a long history of understanding Irish Ferries. The company was once highly respected, offering employment in my constituency and elsewhere and providing a vital service to the State. Unfortunately, the company's recent history is less glorious. In recent times, we have seen the debacle of a Filipina woman who was offered €1 an hour to work as a hairdresser on one of the company's vessels. That woman was treated deplorably. Another woman working on another ferry owned by the company was treated in a similar fashion, but even up to today she has not been offered adequate compensation.

The pattern has emerged of a company that was once reputable and glorious but which has now become a disreputable, maverick operator in the Irish employment sphere. We have had the experience of the MV Normandy whose workers were given notice while on board the ship. The personnel director of Irish Ferries flew to France and boarded the ship to give out redundancy notices to individual workers with an instruction that he wanted to collect them before the ship docked. Virtually no opportunity was given to people to consider their position or discuss it with their trade union representatives. It is not the way we do business in this State where our labour law has been developed and refined over decades to bring about the industrial peace we have enjoyed along with the prosperity that has flowed from it.

Employers, unions and elected representatives must stand firm and not allow any maverick outfit to pull down the edifice of social partnership that has been painstakingly put together by so many people for so long.

At the time of the MV Normandy fiasco, bad and all as it was, promises were given that it would not have any implications for the Irish Sea routes because it was unique to the French ferry. I am afraid, however, that the promise did not last cracking time. There are clear knock-on consequences now, one of which is the demise in recent weeks of Rosslare Ship Repairs, a company that employed workers to maintain the MV Normandy. Apparently, east European workers are able to do everything on the MV Normandy, including crewing the vessel, acting as stewards and doing maintenance. There are issues for us to address on that matter.

These new proposals, however, go well beyond that assault. They are nothing less than an outright attack on social partnership. Social partnership is a two-way process. It has given benefits to everyone, including workers, employers and society at large. The attitude of the employers' organisation, IBEC, is inexplicable therefore. Has IBEC decided to abandon social partnership? It is hard to read any other conclusion into IBEC's statements on the matter. One commentator likened this outrageous move to the outsourcing of workers to third countries but that is an unfair comparison. This situation involves the removal of Irish jobs which are being replaced — because the company has a loophole through which to do it — by people who are paid a fraction of Irish workers' wages, but who take the positions because they are vulnerable and any job is welcome.

The role and attitude of the Government must be examined in this affair. I have sat through this debate from the start, unlike many Members who have flitted in to make comments. We have seen the attitude of the Taoiseach who is the so-called architect of partnership. He was initially aghast but he is not mindful to do anything. The Government amendment is weak and unacceptable. It notes "with concern the initial reluctance of Irish Ferries to engage", but do we have any evidence of an engagement now, beyond peripheral engagement? The Government motion calls on Irish Ferries to "reconsider", but that is not the sort of robust reply from somebody who is supposed to be the defender — or, if one was to believe him, the creator — of social partnership.

The entire response encapsulated in the Government amendment is inadequate and vacuous. The comments of the Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, last night were even worse. Presumably with the notion of trying to be objective, he stated "It should not be forgotten that there are two sides to this dispute... I am aware of the commercial pressures on all shipping companies to reduce their costs and streamline their operations", as if this was a streamlining process rather than something unprecedented in Irish industrial relations. The Minister of State went on to say, "It is not for me to seek to determine an independent shipping company's business strategy". In this instance, however, it is up to the Government to have a view on the outright destruction of Irish jobs and their replacement with vulnerable workers at a fraction of the cost, that is entirely out of kilter with Irish labour law and negotiated wage rates here.

It is time for the Government and the House to be clear and unambiguous. Either we stand with a partnership arrangement or we do not. If we do not that is the end of partnership, but if we do we must act clearly and decisively to protect it. What has Ireland's attitude been to this issue? What is Ireland's attitude to the draft EU directive that would have maintained a proper regime of labour law for ferries operating between EU ports? It is quite clear from the Minister of State's contribution in the House last night that we were against the directive and were part of the cabal that brought it down. The most positive thing the Minister of State could say about the draft directive that would have given these workers rights, was that he was in favour of a study. For good measure, he is still in favour of a study even at this 11th hour. In my judgment, that is hopeless, totally inadequate and disgraceful. Will the Minister enact legislation in advance of the EU directive? He says the directive can be revamped, so it is time we did that. There are precedents for EU directives to be legislated for in advance of the directive becoming mandatory. If we are serious about this issue, if the Taoiseach's tears are not to be crocodile tears and if his utterances are to be seen as anything more than mere rhetoric, we must legislate now. I demand clarity of action from the Government that goes beyond wishes, hopes and exhortations. Are we to make it clear to Irish Ferries and any other maverick employer watching this development that we will not allow this destruction of Irish jobs, this erosion of decades of progress for Irish workers and this edifice of social partnership which has been so positive for the economy to be destroyed? Will we make it legislatively impossible for those who would destroy social partnership to get away with it or will we sit on our hands, shed crocodile tears and do nothing? Tonight we want to hear from the Government exactly what it will do.

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