Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Was the Taoiseach's attention drawn to an assertion that an astounding 70,000 to 120,000 construction workers are being criminally denied their legal and mandatory pension rights by construction bosses, which means that, apart from losing pension entitlements, they are deprived of death in service benefits and sickness benefits? It was not a revolutionary socialist or a trade union activist who made these assertions a few days ago, but the sober Office of the Pensions Ombudsman. The Pensions Ombudsman also pointed out that failing to put workers on a pension scheme is a criminal offence subject to fines and-or imprisonment. This means that up to 130,000 workers are the subject of criminal acts on building sites each day, which have been going on for years and decades.

Can the Taoiseach name one construction boss, builder or developer who has spent one hour in jail for this criminal denial of workers' rights? He cannot, because it has not happened. However, three bricklayers who put a picket on a Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council building site protesting anti-trade union practices found themselves in the High Court and within days in Mountjoy jail where they now languish. The learned judges' eyes are wide open to breaches of their injunctions in favour of construction employers, but their wigs apparently fall over their eyes when it comes to routine criminality from those same construction bosses towards workers.

What has the Taoiseach to say to these workers and their families who are cheated of their pension rights, often through questionable practices and intimidation or through the rampant culture of greed which Government policies have spawned in the construction industry? The Taoiseach has stood over a roller coaster of greed by speculators and developers.

Can workers hope for any vindication of their pension rights when Ministers, those sitting by the Taoiseach now, routinely turn the sod on State projects awarded to major builders who are in flagrant breach of pension rights, a regular occurrence? Is the Taoiseach going to do anything about this sorry situation?

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