Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply and I support his efforts to ensure we have one of the most flexible labour markets in the EU. We have had it for many years, but it need not come at the cost of denying agency workers on sites or locations working alongside domestic workers the same rights as those on the shop floor. This is the net point. Some 27,000 people, 2% of the workforce, are agency workers and this number will increase. As the economy takes a downturn, the likelihood is that employers in some sectors will, for competitive reasons, shift from the traditional form of employment to that of agency workers. In the Minister of State's city and elsewhere, it will create racialist and nationalist tensions of a xenophobic nature between Irish workers displaced and replaced by agency workers.

I am asking a simple question. Why can the Minister of State not embrace the principle of the directive and support it in December when the Portuguese President tables it? Why can the Minister of State not introduce legislation subsequently and enact it domestically in terms and conditions appropriate to the Irish labour market to avoid some of the fears he has expressed regarding how the directive has been framed? We are facing a serious problem. I do not understand why the Government cannot agree with SIPTU and the Labour Party's position on having no discrimination between workers in the workplace, irrespective of where they come from.

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