Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

The Irish Independent headline this morning read: "Aer Lingus for sale: public can buy stake". If we rowed back to 1999 and substituted "Eircom" for "Aer Lingus", that headline would not look out of place. Less than a year after Eircom was floated, the headline read: "Eircom stock price dives on share dump". Not only were small investors stung badly, there was a failure to invest in broadband and the State had to shore up the industry, which meant a doubling of the cost. Given the experience with Eircom, I expect the public will be rightly sceptical in this case.

Aer Lingus was set up in 1936 and 70 years later it is strategically more important than it was at its inception, with air traffic at an all-time high. There have been very few events in the past 70 years that the public has been proud of and while this sale impacts on Aer Lingus staff and pensioners, many of them living in north Dublin, the decision has a national impact also.

The proposal before the House is a disgrace. The fact we are an island nation is critical in terms of its strategic importance. The company is in profit, largely because the workers made it profitable, and the public has confidence in the services it provides. The staff have every reason to be sceptical also because while it appears a good deal on paper, the experience of workers seconded to TEAM Aer Lingus tells a very different tale. For some workers it has been a 16 year court battle, which is not over. The Supreme Court issued a judgment in King and ors v. Aer Lingus PLC on 22 March this year. The question of damages and back pay was referred back to the High Court by the Supreme Court but Aer Lingus is repudiating the Supreme Court order that those engineers be paid the same as engineers who did not second. Months later, however, that has not occurred. Highly trained engineering staff seconded to TEAM Aer Lingus, who returned to Aer Lingus, have been deployed since 1998 in baggage handling and wash-up duties, and have had their pay withheld. The Supreme Court judgment states:

I conclude therefore on this issue that on returning to Aer Lingus in 1998, the claimants were at that point entitled to do so as if Team had never existed, that they were then entitled to be paid the same levels of remuneration as mechanical engineers employed by Aer Lingus who had not been seconded. They were further entitled, in my view, to have their seniority fully recognised and be placed on the appropriate incremental scale as though they had never left Aer Lingus.

That clearly has not happened. What possible commitments can be given by the Government when that has been the practice of the company? I heard Deputy Glennon say that this was one of the matters that needed to be resolved. It also shows the shameful practice of the company in terms of a commitment that was given. The commitment was not just given by the company to the workers. It was made here in the Dáil in a reply to a parliamentary question by the then Minister for Public Enterprise, Senator O'Rourke. It is a disgraceful decision and a disgraceful practice in terms of how the workers were treated. While this issue in its own right needs to be resolved, it also sends a very strong message to the pensioners and workers of Aer Lingus, who need to consider the matter very carefully.

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