Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

There are 1,263 heads to the company law consolidation reform Bill, which have been approved by Government. It is not possible to give a date as to when the Bill will be ready. I hope towards the second half of this year to introduce a preliminary debate in the Committee on Enterprise Trade and Employment to facilitate consideration of the Bill by the Members of the House Bill parallel to its detailed drafting. Deputy Penrose was anxious that we facilitate such a process to ensure an early debate on the legislation. Members of the House could feed into such a debate, which would be a useful exercise in the ultimate formulation of the Bill through the House.

Regarding the second Bill to which the Deputy referred, the issues of the streamlining of the labour relations bodies and so forth are important and are under consideration. However, the existing framework has presided over a dramatic transformation of industrial relations here, if one compares the position in the 1980s to that pertaining today in terms of the number of days lost through strikes and so on. Therefore, the existing bodies have performed well. Issues have been raised in the context of perhaps merging or changing the level of responsibilities of each. That involves fundamental issues and I am involved in detailed consideration with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, in respect of them. I do not accept that the Bill will not be ready before the next election. I expect we will be in a position to progress it once the NERA Bill, which is the employment compliance Bill, is passed through the House. We will then deal with this legislation.

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