Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Furthermore, the country of origin principle would not apply to health and safety conditions in the workplace, to which Deputy Harkin referred. In this context, Irish law would apply.

Deputy Rabbitte said this would apply to the bogeyman company to which he constantly refers in public discourse by means of which Irish employers would set up a Latvian company with Latvian workers and send them over here to deliver a service. I should further add that if this mythical Latvian company were to open a branch or local office here — the majority of service companies which have ambitions to make inroads into the Irish market would almost certainly have to do so — then it would not be covered by the country of origin principle. To date, we have been active to ensure this is the case.

We acknowledge that more work remains to be done in terms of amending the country of origin principle. We are concerned about protecting workers' pay, conditions and living standards, which we have done so much to increase in this country. People like to refer to the Commissioner, Mr. McCreevy, as a bogeyman but as Minister for Finance he introduced policies which saw an unprecedented increase in jobs in this State.

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