Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"welcomes,

—the commitment of the Government to uphold the rights of workers, which are set out in Irish labour law. These rights include:

—statutory rates of pay;

—limitations on hours worked;

—health and safety provisions;

—statutory redundancy; and

—carers, maternity and adoptive leave;

—the record of the Government in introducing a comprehensive range of legislative and other measures which are aimed at and have significantly improved the terms and conditions available to workers in the Irish labour market, including health and safety, part-time and fixed-term workers, national minimum wage levels, substantial increases in redundancy entitlements and improvements for carers and parents;

—measures taken by the Government to improve compliance by a minority of employers who fail to fulfil their statutory obligations to their workers. These measures include:

—a substantial increase in the number of labour inspectors; and

—active engagement with the social partners to agree significant improvements to the regime for employment rights compliance;

—the fact that the interests of both employers and employees are overseen by a single Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment since enterprise and employment policies are complementary and not in competition with each other, and notes that it is only by growing our competitiveness, increasing our trade performance and expanding enterprise development that this Government in particular has produced sustainable high quality jobs while simultaneously ensuring that Ireland has a well-trained and confident workforce, which enjoys the protection of our health and safety and employment rights legislation;

—the efforts of the Government to promote the training and retraining of those in employment in the context of lifelong learning through its One Step Up and other initiatives;

—the commitment of the Government to uphold Irish and EU law and wider international conventions, where these are consistent with our EU obligations and with our social and economic objectives; and

—the Government's commitment to the social partnership model as the most appropriate mechanism for advancing these issues in the interests of both employees and employers."

I am delighted to have this opportunity to address the House this evening. As Minister of State with responsibility for labour affairs, I am acutely aware of the deep and unwavering commitment of the Government in the area of employment rights provision, as evidenced by the various actions and the legislative progress achieved over the past eight years. Particular highlights include the introduction of the national minimum wage in 2000, implementation of the fixed-term work provisions and the recent further strengthening of the labour inspectorate. The latter is an issue to which I will return because I believe that we are moving ever closer to a situation where some novel and innovative thinking is presenting us with options that will underpin a newly energised, modernised and formidable compliance model that will be more effective and efficient than current practice.

Our national minimum wage is the highest in the EU. Other protections and entitlements are provided for in legislation focused on equality, health and safety, working time, redundancy, maternity, parenting and caring. This is a vast body of work and certainly cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be characterised as reflective of a nation that does not protect and promote the rights of its workers, determine fair remuneration for a decent standard of living and uphold the principle of equal pay for equal work.

We are sometimes asked to react as if there were no social and employment protection framework in place in this State. This is clearly not the case as the impact of the body of legislation and the quality of our employment rights institutions refute any such assertion. The challenge in a rapidly growing economy is to ensure that there is adequate, timely and effective enforcement of compliance with the statutory provisions now in place.

The Carers Leave Act 2001 came into operation on 2 July 2001. The main purpose of the Act is to provide for an entitlement for employees to avail of up to 65 weeks unpaid leave from their employment to enable them to care personally for individuals who require full-time care and attention. This maximum entitlement will shortly be extended to 104 weeks. The Act fulfilled the Government commitment in budget 2000 and in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness that legislation would be introduced to give effect to a carer's benefit payment and a parallel right to carer's leave.

The Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 came into operation on 20 December 2001. The Act outlaws discrimination against part-time workers vis-À-vis comparable full-time workers on the ground of their part-time status. In line with the Government's commitments in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, the Act includes pay and pensions as part of the conditions of employment for part-time employees. These provisions also apply to posted workers. Thus, a person, irrespective of nationality or place of residence, who works in the State under a contract of employment, has the same rights under Irish employment law as Irish employees.

The Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 came into operation on 14 July 2003. The Act provides for the improvement of the quality of fixed-term work by ensuring the application of the principle of non-discrimination.

A number of statutory instruments relating to various areas of employment rights legislation have also been made over recent years. The Protection of Employees on Transfer of Undertakings Regulations came into effect from 11 April 2003 and implemented the mandatory provisions of the relevant EU directive. The regulations are aimed at protecting the rights of employees arising from an employment contract in the event of a transfer of a business or part of a business, in which they are employed, which entails a change of employer. Complaints that an employer has contravened these regulations may, generally, be referred in the first instance to a rights commissioner and, on appeal, to the Employment Appeals Tribunal.

A total of five statutory instruments under the Protection of Young Persons (Employment) Act 1996, concerning employment rights of young persons, have been made over the lifetime of this and the previous Administration — in this context, young persons are 16 and 17 years old.

In addition, the Department facilitated the drawing up of a code of practice under the aforementioned Act concerning the employment of young persons in licensed premises. The main purpose of the code of practice is to set out for the guidance of employers and employees the duties and responsibilities, including statutory obligations, concerning the employment of young persons on general duties in licensed premises. The code of practice covers young people who are 16 and 17 years old, including all second level students, excluding bar apprentices in the licensed trade, who are employed at any time in licensed premises, be it for summer, other holidays or part-time work.

From 1997, the Government, together with the previous Administration, made a total of 18 statutory instruments under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 relating to maximum weekly working hours, minimum daily and weekly rest periods, rest intervals at work and public holiday entitlements of employees.

I will now deal with the area of redundancy payments. Notwithstanding the exceptional economic success of our economy at present, we are ever vulnerable to global pressures on manufacturing and services activities. Some companies can no longer survive in this environment and they continue to close. Other companies survive by means of market diversification, technology and downsizing. Our improved redundancy legislation, benefits and service go some way to alleviate the immediate impact.

Extensive work has gone into improving the service side of processing redundancy application and payments. The redundancy review group, consisting of representatives of the social partners and Government, produced a comprehensive report in July 2002 on how best to simplify the redundancy payments system. It proposed amending legislation and commissioning of a new e-government-based IT system.

The Redundancy Payments Act 2003 was enacted in May 2003 and represents the most radical change to the redundancy payments scheme since the original Redundancy Payments Act 1967 which started the scheme. The 2003 Act provided the legislative framework for the significantly enhanced level of statutory redundancy payments of two weeks' pay per year of service, plus a bonus week, agreed by the social partners and Government under Sustaining Progress. The old payment level had been restricted to half a week's pay for every year of service up to the age of 41 and a week's pay for every year over 41 years, together with a bonus week.

The 2003 Act also provided the legal basis for the new on-line redundancy payments IT system. Following agreement at the second phase of Sustaining Progress the enhanced payments level was further increased on 1 January 2005 by an upward revision of the ceiling on weekly pay for redundancy calculation purposes from €507.90 to €600.

The Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform has published orders extending the periods of leave available under the Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the Adoptive Leave Act 1995. Both orders are effective from 1 March 2006. While these enactments fall outside the remit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, it is no less indicative of the Government's positive attitude to the broad spectrum of employment rights issues, including the wider family friendly/work-life balance concerns which have been mentioned.

I wish to refer to the Department's employment rights-related functions that concern the International Labour Organisation. Since 1997, Ireland has continued to be represented at the annual international labour conference by a tripartite delegation, representing the Government, trade unions and employers. Ireland takes a vigorous stance on its membership of the ILO. In particular, as EU President, Ireland co-ordinated the EU's position on the various agenda items at the 92nd session of the ILO conference in June 2004.

During this period, Ireland continued to report annually, in accordance with the provisions of the ILO constitution, on the various ILO conventions ratified by Ireland since joining the ILO in 1923. Since 1997, a total of eight ILO conventions were ratified by Ireland. In 2005, Ireland was honoured to be elevated to the ILO's governing body for only the third time since 1923.

Ireland has continued to report regularly on how it implements the Council of Europe's 1961 social charter and revised social charter, and to answer questions at the governmental committee of the European social charter on its reports. A total of seven such reports on how we implement the European social charters were submitted since 1997. These are the subject of detailed discussions at meetings of the governmental committee of the European social charter, which meets three times per annum.

The enforcement of employment rights is too often characterised as a discrete function undertaken solely by the labour inspectorate. The reality is that there is a formidable corpus of legislation that provides for a range of obligations and entitlements both for employers and employees. The employment rights arena is populated by various bodies — for example, the Labour Court, the Employment Appeals Tribunal and the rights commissioner service, to name just a few. Each is charged with the task of administering that considerable volume of employment law.

As always, there is scope for improvement but it is not a solution simply to appoint hundreds of labour inspectors. Additional labour inspectors have been appointed and since November 2005 there have been 31 officers serving in the position of labour inspector. This represents almost a doubling of the number of labour inspectors in recent years.

See this speech in context