Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

It does. I hope the criticism I voiced will be taken constructively.

I agree with Deputy Quinn on another matter. As a small employer in the past, I appreciate it is incredibly difficult for an enterprise with fewer than 200 or 300 employees to have the scale and ability to follow in a meaningful way some of the employment legislation we draft and the regulations in place to comply with them in the first instance and, second, to follow the procedures established under them. In nine times out of ten it is not worth the trouble of pursuing the proper procedures and they hope to get out of it in whatever way they can. The same could apply to workers who may not have trade union representation or the collective might to achieve a just and correct settlement. There is a need to amalgamate employment legislation and to introduce new legislation that is not a difficult regulatory burden on either employers or workers acting collectively.

I do not share the concerns about the three-year review and legislation can easily be amended further if there is amalgamation of employment legislation.

The issue is important because there are different difficulties in every work situation and there are cases of entire companies being transferred. We need to be concerned about what is happening in the economy. I refer to the case of a national newspaper where there is a proposal to dispense with a section of the business by means of a redundancy process and the setting up of a contract agency to provide the same function. This may be beneficial in terms of a more flexible enterprise culture but it may also allow for certain practices of concern such as the drafting in of labour standards which are below the desired standard. I do not wish to imply this applies to the case to which I have referred but there is a general concern that the migration of cheap labour combined with lower labour standards may not just apply in the high profile cases but may also apply in many other cases. It is important to have definition and clarity and I look forward to teasing out these issues on Report Stage. I commend the Bill to the House and give it my party's support.

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