Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Time will not allow me answer all of those questions. Generally, I support implementation of the employment rights and compliance agenda agreed under Towards 2016. The Deputy is aware that several issues arise in that regard. There was a Supreme Court decision earlier in the year which created difficulties for the trade unions. That matter is under discussion by trade unions, employers and us. Agency workers have become a big issue because of the way so many of the immigrants and those who are coming in under the European regulations are being employed. Detailed discussions are ongoing in regard to those issues.

Deputy Ó Caoláin asked for an update regarding employment rights and the compliance agenda. We spent a long time working on Towards 2016. We spent five or six months working on a comprehensive package of measures dealing with employment rights and compliance. The Deputy touched on several of the points. They included the establishment of a new statutory body for employment rights compliance, a trebling of the number of labour inspectors, significant increases in penalties for non-compliance with employment law — that is for Irish workers or immigrant workers — measures to further protect agency workers, which is part of that package, and new legislation in regard to exceptional collective redundancy and dismissals in the context of industrial disputes.

That agreement also provided for the establishment of more user-friendly adjudication and redress mechanisms in the employment rights area. All of those are covered in the agreement. If I were to go through each of them, it would take a considerable amount of time. The Employment Law Compliance Bill will be published before the end of this year. It will provide among other things for the establishment on a statutory basis of the new employment rights authority, NERA. A director has been appointed and the management team is in place. More than 20 labour inspectors have been appointed. Ten inspectors with specific language skills are being recruited. The number of inspectors will be increased from the current level of 37 to 90 by the end of this year.

The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has also announced proposals in regard to the regionalisation of the labour inspectorate. We also enacted the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2007 which covers a number of these points. Regarding the Revenue Commissioners, we have updated the powers of investigation of self-employment issues which is a large part of what the Deputy inquired about.

On the welfare side, we introduced very strict regulations and obligations in regard to PRSI. The sixth part was the Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Act which was signed in the summer of 2007. Progress on all these issues is ongoing. The agency issue is still under discussion as the union side feels significant abuses still operate in this area. I have discussed this with individual unions and with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. We are committed to trying to make further progress in that area.

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