Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I am not aware that legislation is promised to place the guidelines the Deputy mentioned on a statutory footing. The problem with all industrial relations disputes is that they usually arise when people do not engage in best industrial relations practice. On the particular issue causing a problem at the moment, the public will look askance at the fact that determining who puts a light bulb in a light fitting requires the sort of actions being taken at present which have discommoded patients and affected activity in hospitals throughout the south and south east. Given that we are setting up a health forum to try to get people to work together and deal with issues surrounding reform of the health service, that such circumstances would arise out of such an issue marks a failure by unions and management to resolve matters in a sensible way. It is an indication of how steep the incline seems to be in terms of reforming the health service when this sort of disproportionate consequence arises out of an issue which should be resolved in a common sense manner, particularly given the challenge facing everybody in trying to provide a health service that meets the expectations of the public.

Craft workers who are members of the TEEU are engaged in industrial action in the HSE southern area. They withdrew from on-call and call-out services from 16 July. The issues in dispute have been the subject of five conciliation conferences, most recently on 9 October. The management is satisfied that progress has been made on all issues, namely, maintenance structures, contractors, on-call and call-out, promotions, the Labour Court recommendation on the change agenda at Cork University Hospital and retrospective payments for increases due under Sustaining Progress and Towards 2016. However, agreement has not been reached and the union has refused to refer the matter to a full hearing of the Labour Court.

People must resume normal activities and enable the industrial relations machinery to be utilised, as is being done in a range of other ways, to avoid a situation in which patients or operations are put at risk. There are enough issues and problems in the health service without being exacerbated in this way. I ask everyone to take responsibility and deal with the matter in the way to which the public is entitled to expect.

As Minister for the public service, I examined the other matter under discussion on the basis that a conditionality applied to the category of public servants into which politicians fall that did not apply elsewhere. The same criteria should apply across the board where one's right to entitlement is not compromised or undermined by a failure to apply in writing within a specified period, a criterion that is not the case in respect of other public service arrangements. It was necessary to put this category on a similar footing. A case was made and I received advice and discussed the issue. There were opinions on both sides of the fence and I reached a decision. Instead of exceptionalising an individual, putting the individual in the same position as other public service workers was the basis of my decision.

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