Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

The bullyboy style ultimatum that Irish Ferries workers face represents a new low for Irish companies and the tactics Irish Ferries used to coerce people into taking so-called redundancy within a desperate two-week timeframe even though they had dedicated more than 30 years of their lives to the company is a shocking ploy undertaken by what was once a decent company. The behaviour of Irish Ferries throughout this episode has been totally reprehensible including its repeated shunning of one of the most respected industrial relations institutions, the Labour Court, until it thought it had secured sufficient acceptances of redundancy to make any Labour Court ruling obsolete.

The treatment of Irish Ferries workers who carry out a tough and essential job for the nation in difficult circumstances, often requiring them to be away from their families for extended periods and working in stormy conditions has been utterly shameful. Many of the workers have been with the company for decades and were forced into an impossible and agonising position by the company. Workers not accepting the package could have been left with nothing to show for years of service and little hope of gaining other employment in the maritime sector for which they had been trained and to which they had dedicated most of their lives. Constituents I represent were left in this totally hopeless position agonising desperately over whether to take the deal even though they were implacably opposed to the plan by Irish Ferries to discard them and their colleagues on to the scrap heap and yellow-pack Irish maritime jobs forever. The two-week deadline imposed on Irish Ferries workers to accept the deal or receive no redundancy payment was callous and despicable in the extreme.

We have heard no business case for the road down which Irish Ferries has taken our economy. Mr. Rothwell has not made the remotest case for it. Why can Stena Lines with 60% of market share continue to operate with relatively decent pay and conditions for its staff? When the record of Mr. Rothwell's management of Irish Ferries is considered it will be clear that his ineptitude has contributed most to the need for Irish Ferries to cut costs. For example, why did he decide to purchase the London travel agency, Tara, for €6 million — an operation that has since collapsed. Even more serious was the way he dramatically boosted the capacity of the parent company, Irish Continental Group, and bought the massive MV Ulysses while the MV Inisfree was still in operation. He ended MV Ulysses up in dry dock for 15 months while he failed to find a buyer for the MV Inisfree.

When Mr. Rothwell's record is analysed in a clinical way we see error of judgment after error of judgment. While all this was going on and workers desperately tried to cut back and provide compliance with what he required in recent years, the level of Mr. Rothwell's pay continued to escalate even in the light of his own serious management mishaps. Mr. Rothwell got a €374,000 bonus leaving his overall remuneration package at approximately €687,000 for the year or €14,617 per week when the profits of ICG dropped by 17% in 2003. He also has shares in the company worth approximately €19.8 million. While Sparks and King were carrying out their analysis and before they reported we learnt that Mr. Rothwell placed advertisements in the press in Eastern Europe seeking workers approximately ten days before the report was due to be published.

ICG earned a profit of more than €26 million last year and yet one worker, working as a beautician on the MV Inisfree ended up being paid €1 per hour working a 12-hour day seven days per week. How can such regimes be justified against the background of a successful company. During the week it was noticeable that the usual hyenas in the right wing newspapers ranted and raved about the great rottweiler and how we had a new Michael O'Leary on the Irish Sea. While I have no time for the rotten tactics employed by Mr. O'Leary in refusing trade union recognition, when the track records of Mr. O'Leary and that of the so-called rottweiler are considered, the rottweiler is no Michael O'Leary in terms of entrepreneurial flair. On inspection he turns out to be grossly incompetent.

I salute the efforts of our SIPTU colleagues, in particular Mr. Tony Ayton and the ICF international union on the great battle they fought over many years. The latest episode with Irish Ferries has brought a despicable situation to a head. SIPTU has been battling continually against the disgraceful pay and conditions for workers on the Cork to Swansea route where the law of the jungle is allowed to prevail on the open seas and all efforts of the union have been defeated. We have seen the agony suffered by the workers on the MV Normandy and now we are faced with the devastation of the remaining three Irish Ferries ships in terms of an Irish workforce. Throughout this time our Maritime Development Agency and the National Maritime College are educating people to be mariners. As an island nation we need to get out there and look after our trade and passenger traffic on the sea. At the same time we have this yahoo in Irish Ferries seeking to destroy totally what has been achieved by the Government in this regard.

Deputy Howlin referred to the EU ferry directive, which was discussed lugubriously around the European Commission from 1998 to 2004. When we consider the record of those who represented us at those negotiations, Senator O'Rourke, as Minister for Public Enterprise, Deputy Woods, as Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Jacob, as Minister of State at the Department of Public Enterprise, and the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, as Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, it is clear that throughout that time Ireland was not on the side of those who wanted to bring about a lawful behaviour in the ferry industry, whereby the pay and conditions of all ferry workers would need to adhere to the minimum standards of whichever port they came from or went to. It is clear the Irish Government played a despicable role in defeating the efforts to introduce a ferries directive.

Last week I had an interesting discussion in Liberty Hall with Mr. Norrie McVicker, a senior Scottish trade union official. He told me about the licensing system the Scottish Executive has introduced into its ferry industry covering routes between the Scottish islands and its mainland. A great hypocrisy in Irish Ferries is that while it attempted to devastate and sack its own workforce it applied for a licence to allow it to ply its trade on one of the Scottish routes.

What about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea regarding the flagging of vessels, which states that there must be a genuine link between the state and the ship.

As usual the Taoiseach has behaved in an outrageous manner in this regard. He stated here that what was happening with Irish Ferries was sharp practice. Why did he not he put his money where his mouth is and introduce emergency legislation to provide a licensing system to adhere to the international convention to bring about a regime such as the European ferries directive? This would have ensured that Irish workers would have decent pay and conditions. This is still the challenge facing the country. As Deputy Howlin said, if we want to continue with social partnership, workers and their representatives must be treated as part of that partnership.

Ultimately it must be remembered that Irish Ferries has received substantial supports from the State. Tonnage tax was introduced primarily to help the company and a number of other carriers on the Irish Sea and it benefited substantially when it was in difficult days in 2002 and 2003 from the operation of tonnage tax. It is obvious that in other areas of accelerated depreciation allowances and taxation matters, Irish Ferries was pushing an open door in terms of support.

I salute the courage of the trade union movement, in particular SIPTU president Jack O'Connor, the head of ICTU, David Begg, Mr. Tony Ayton and Mr. Paul Smith, all of whom have highlighted the dreadful conditions which have applied to maritime workers where they have been yellow-packed, so to speak. On this matter they have drawn a line in the sand. They have rightly told the Taoiseach and the Government that this is a litmus test and that they will not accept outrageous, disgraceful bullyboy tactics used against 600 decent Irish male and female workers. That is not acceptable to this House or to the people. It comes close to being a form of criminal behaviour and must be dealt with by legislation.

The Taoiseach must make a choice. If he wants to have some sort of social partnership for the future, a partnership which has underpinned many of the developments of this country, he must put in place the necessary legislation. A few weeks ago we passed a Bill within an hour when it was necessary to safeguard State property. We are now talking of the people of our State who decent, fine, brave workers. We can also pass a Bill next Tuesday and tell Mr. Rothwell he can adhere to Irish labour law and Irish pay.

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