Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I have repeated it many times outside the House. The leaders of SIPTU have met the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and discussed at length the issues of the legislation. The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources has also given his best assessment on it. We have also agreed with ICTU and SIPTU to exchange our legal situations on the matter to see precisely what we can do. For the record, at this stage I am advised it would be extremely difficult to deal with the issue of re-flagging in both Irish law and international law. That has been the advice. I wish there was an easy solution to this issue, but there does not seem to be. It does not seem to be permissible to change it, but the Attorney General is closely examining the matter and he has also looked at international law to see what we can do on it. I will exchange any of those facts with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to try to resolve this issue.

An argument has been made over which I am deeply concerned. I have spoken to the senior management of Irish Ferries. I met the chairman and the chief executive. What I said here and much more I said directly across the table to them. Irish Ferries would argue, as would many others on the employers' side, that it is a totally exceptional issue. There are grave dangers for social development in the country if we are to create a situation that employers can get rid of Irish workers who are doing a good job and buy them out whether it is at large levels of remuneration or redundancy or otherwise and replace them with people from eastern Europe or elsewhere at low cost.

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