Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

Yes. The Progressive Democrats Members are also noticeable by their absence. I wonder if this shows their level of interest in this debate.

I suggest a Department dealing with social, family and labour or employment affairs. This would provide an historic opportunity to connect those who are unemployed with those who are in the workforce. It would help provide a critical connection with our work-life balance and with families, those who undertake valuable voluntary work and those working as carers within families. Such a Department would be a coherent and useful unit which would work very well.

I suggest the communications brief should be brought back into the Department dealing with enterprise and trade. It sits much better in a pro-enterprise culture and would facilitate the introduction of broadband technology and other infrastructure which would mark the country as an enterprise location. I recommend that Departments should be reshaped but not in the way the Taoiseach seems to do things, by trying to avoid hurting anyone's feelings or by trying to look after his own internecine needs in Fianna Fáil.

There does not necessarily need to be a conflict of interest within the present Department between the promotion of workers' rights and the development of an enterprise culture. This country must not participate in a race to the bottom by being one where products are processed without added value. It is recognised that the strategic development which must be undertaken is to add higher value to enterprise and aim for more creative, innovative and enterprising companies rather than relying on direct investment from foreign multinationals who use Ireland as a launching pad into the European Union. That policy has proved to be very successful but it is a risky policy especially if borne on the back of low wages and conditions in this country while the sales and intelligent marketing function take place outside the country.

We need to move in the direction of encouraging the brains of enterprise and creativity and innovation to stay here. This has been recommended in the latest enterprise strategy report. The conditions for those working under such a strategy should recognise workers' rights and allow them freedom, responsibility and the environment in which to be creative and innovative. Such workers will enable Irish enterprise to move forward. This is the opposite to a punitive and mean working environment looking to add the ha'pence to the pence as products are sold on to other countries. The right to access lifelong learning and opportunities and vocational training fits in perfectly with the higher value enterprise culture which we should look to develop.

Those on the other side of the House could not disagree with the right of all to work in safe conditions and must support the proposal to ensure such a right exists in every workplace and building site, office and factory. I doubt if anyone on the other side of the house would dispute the right of a person to form and be a member of a trade union. The right to fair play is a crucial provision, especially in a country which is changing and opening up. The real fear is not that workers will be displaced but that the Government would be happy to see wage levels driven down so that the minimum wage becomes the standard rather than what it should be, a protection for those at the very bottom. I also stand by the right to be free from exploitation. I refer to Deputy Joe Higgins who outlined some of the cases of exploitation.

I support this motion and it is a question of how the proposal can be achieved. I fear that on the other side of the House is a Government that believes its own propaganda. It is sitting pretty thinking it created the economic boom by looking after business at all costs. This is not the clever way forward in terms of enterprise or economic development. I commend the motion and will be interested to hear the Government's response and that of the Progressive Democrats to this useful and interesting debate.

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