Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

notes:

that this Government is committed to ensuring that Ireland's comprehensive body of employment rights legislation applies to migrant workers including foreign agency workers in exactly the same way as it applies to Irish workers e.g. national minimum wage, organisation of working time, unfair dismissals minimum notice, etc.;

that a range of measures to support employment standards have been put in place arising from commitments agreed in Towards 2016 including:

that the Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Act 2007 has been enacted;

that the National Employment Rights Authority has been established and has commenced operations with significant management resources and will have a full complement of 90 labour inspectors, including ten with specific foreign language skills;

that the flexibility of the labour market is important for job creation, and competitive enterprises require adaptability in work organisation to meet the needs arising for seasonal work and that the capacity to source workers on a flexible basis is of considerable value to successful companies;

that the Government is committed to full engagement with the social partners in developing its policies on labour market regulation;

that concerns have been expressed about the potential abuse of the employment rights of certain foreign agency workers who may be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse;

that the EU Presidency was unable to establish a degree of consensus in support of the specific proposals put forward in December 2007 and that there was no vote taken on the proposals, that the Government will continue to work within the EU to find solutions on outstanding matters; and

that the Government is fully committed to the early delivery of further primary legislation aimed at enhanced compliance and enforcement of employment rights generally including legislation to regulate the operation of employment agencies and a statutory Code of Practice for employment agencies.

I wish to share time with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Micheál Martin. As Minister of State responsible for labour affairs, I am glad to have the opportunity of debating the important issue of temporary agency workers. There has been much public comment about this issue in recent times.

Before getting into the detail of the issues, I wish to place on record that the Government is deeply committed to decent standards of employment. Any objective analysis of the Government's record, and that of the previous Governments led by our Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, will show that over the last ten years or so, significant and substantial measures have been taken to underpin employment standards which have surpassed that of any other administration.

An extensive range of employment rights has been extended to cover the protection of working conditions of temporary workers, including agency workers, in the past decade. I am speaking here about core standards and employment rights which workers can vindicate. Furthermore, this period has also seen the introduction of the national minimum wage, a ground-breaking measure that for the first time secured a wage floor for workers.

Developments have included improvements across a wide spectrum of conditions of employment, from daily to weekly rest periods as well as annual and public holiday entitlements which are a feature of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. There has also been comprehensive legislative measures to protect temporary workers employed under fixed-term contracts and in respect of part-time work.

Fundamentally, section 20 of the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001, which transposed into Irish legislation the EU directive on posting of workers, provides that employee protection legislation applies to migrant workers in the same way as to Irish nationals. These include agency workers assigned by an overseas agency, as employer, to work under the control and direction of an end-user enterprise in Ireland who may obtain the benefits and protection of Irish labour law.

Agency workers also fall within the ambit of protection under employment equality legislation with its focus on non-discrimination.

See this speech in context