Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

We are anxious to progress the legislation. The Minister has completed two of the Bills. He has been in consultation with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. He wants to bring the legislation to fruition in a way that addresses aspects not in Towards 2016, but that arose subsequently. The Government supports the legislation.

I explained the issue of agency workers in detail to the House last week. The European directive creates its own problems in terms of our position, which is that our social partners must agree on these issues. Rather than just accepting the European position and putting that into Irish law, we have always taken the view that we must consult. Sometimes it suits employers that we do so and sometimes it suits the organised workers, but it is the same regardless of the issue and it would be wrong to move away from that position and adopt a directive without taking account of the normal arrangements we have for industrial relations. There is no difficulty in this regard. Both the Minister, Deputy Martin, and the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, have been engaging with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and they and their officials are anxious to continue to do so.

On the joint labour committees, JLCs, as the Deputy is aware, an injunction was granted last week. That case was taken by the employers' side. The immediate effect of the injunction granted is to prevent increases in the minimum rates of pay for workers in the hotel sector, which were due to come into effect on 16 November last. As employment regulation orders, EROs, generally address the conditions of low pay workers, the pay increases at issue are quite modest; they are less than €8.50 per week. The Irish Hotels Federation action appears to be driven by a determination in principle not to pay more than the statutory minimum wage. It is the opposite to the Irish Ferries case the Deputy raised where they were paying less than the minimum wage. This issue was an argument to tie the JLC to the minimum wage.

There is a commitment in Towards 2016, which the Minister, Deputy Martin, pointed out in recent days, to modernise the operations of the JLC system. That is ongoing under the Labour Court but the exercise was not intended to consider the legislative aspects of the system. It was appropriate to take the legal decision we took last week but we are now faced with having to resolve the legislation for the JLC system generally.

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