Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

Serious debate should take place on disestablishing the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I say this not only as someone who was in favour of but negotiated the two programmes for Government that established the original Department of Enterprise and Employment, bringing together the old Departments of Labour and Industry and Commerce. In the early 1990s there was a view, which I shared, that bringing together the two sides of the employment equation would strengthen both the rights of workers and labour law and create synergy between enterprise, industry and labour protection.

It worked rather well when Deputy Quinn was the first Minister for Enterprise and Employment. The Department has since expanded by including the area of trade, which is extraneous and places an additional demand on the Department. The Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with special responsibility for trade and commerce, Deputy Michael Ahern, is present and I do not suppose he regards trade as extraneous but it is a different division within the Department, which is very broad.

When Deputy Quinn was the Department's Minister the synergies worked as he was a former Minister for Labour and understood the importance of the long-standing worker protections. Unfortunately, as the Department developed, the ethos of enterprise smothered the notion of worker protection, which has become a secondary subset within the Department. This clearly happened while the Tánaiste was Minister in the Department. The labour protection regime, the development of workers rights and examining workers in a continuous way have taken secondary roles to the development of enterprise, the views of big business and the arguments of the Department's industrial division. That this situation has continued under the Tánaiste's successor in that Department, the current Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, is a great pity.

This motion is worthy of serious consideration because, after a period of ten or 12 years, it is time to evaluate whether the merging of the Departments has worked. Telling the House that, as the Department exists, it should be defended or it has done good work and should not be examined is a knee-jerk reaction. I met with the managing director of Microsoft today, who is doing work for the Department in relation to small business. He told me his company examines its structures every year and makes significant structural changes every three years to check the structure is giving value for money. Microsoft is one of the most successful corporations in the world. Should we not examine whether we are structurally administering the country well? If a three-year time lapse is appropriate to a company as important, strong and successful as Microsoft, we can give reasoned consideration to a proposal such as this for a major Department.

We have a very different and, in many ways, more positive country than in 1993, particularly in the climate of an extraordinary change in the workforce. Over 2 million people are working in the economy. The workforce is multi-ethnic and much more complex in types of employment and, as such, needs are greater. With the Minister of State, I supported and amended the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 as it passed through the Dáil and know there are issues of managing, looking after, structuring and policing a much more varied and complex labour market and labour force than existed at the time the various Departments were brought together. It is timely we should examine this matter.

I am disappointed in the Government's amendment, which states the Government is responsible for everything from the proper regulation of "statutory rates of pay" to "limitations on hours worked". These laws have been promulgated by all Governments for over 30 years. The major breakthrough in most of these laws was made by a former leader of the Labour Party who departed for Fine Gael subsequently, Mr. Michael O'Leary, one of the most successful Ministers for Labour this country has ever seen, certainly in legislative terms.

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