Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

The Towards 2016 agreement was made more than two years ago and circumstances have changed fundamentally and considerably since then. We are now in the midst of an economic crisis and the social partnership system has not held up in the way others may have expected or hoped, given the decisions made this week.

The Bill was published last March but it is an indication of how flawed it is that it took so long to come before the House. The Minister of State has outlined some amendments which are planned for the most flawed parts of the Bill and I look forward to seeing their details.

As this Bill arose from the Towards 2016 agreement, it is worth noting the most recent statement from IBEC, one of the social partners, that in its view the Bill as drafted goes way beyond what was agreed at the Towards 2016 stage:"We must oppose any measure that makes it more difficult to get a job and keep a job, including any attempts to make the labour market more flexible." It refers in particular to the 23 new criminal offences established in this Bill and also the new powers conferred on NERA. It may be the case that IBEC will be satisfied by the Minister of State's amendments but it may not. I am not sure if Chambers Ireland is a social partner but it represents chambers of commerce all over the country and in my view is therefore a national economic partner. I do not know whether it is a Fianna Fáil social partner but it has issued a statement today condemning and criticising the Bill and saying that its members consider it to be an additional layer of bureaucracy. It has made its opposition clear. The representative body of small and medium-sized enterprises, ISME, is not a social partner of Fianna Fáil's but in my view it is an important social and economic partner representing tens of thousands of businesses across the country. It is strongly opposed to this Bill which it considers to be an attempt to criminalise employers.

I note that 320,000 people are on the live register and 450,000 people will be on the register before the end of the year. We need to be very careful about the type of employment legislation we adopt in order to ensure that by attempting to protect employees we do not end up putting their jobs at risk as an unintended consequence.

The Bill gives statutory footing to NERA. I do not have a problem with a statutory footing for the body but as the Ministers have said on a number of occasions, it is unnecessary. However, I have a problem with the concept of setting up an agency to solve every problem and I will return to that point later.

I refer to the further bureaucratisation of the employment law system and the proliferation of quangos and State agencies. This Bill will establish another board on a statutory footing and create a multiplicity of organisations dealing with labour rights with up to six different organisations in existence which will lead to confusion and cause problems both for employers and employees. I am concerned at the near-extraordinary powers the Bill gives and in many cases it changes the relationship between employers and employees from one that is largely voluntarist and co-operative to one which involves the criminalisation of employers. I will deal with this point in more detail later in my contribution. It gives extraordinary powers to NERA which are like those of the Garda Síochána or of the powers which are abused by the Competition Authority. My party will not stand over giving a State agency those kind of powers.

The Bill will have the greatest impact on small and medium-sized enterprises. Large business, the banks and semi-State companies are represented by IBEC — it does not really represent small business. Big business and large companies have human relations and legal departments to deal with aspects of the Bill but such legislation will be a heavy burden on small business. The Small Firms Association is the division of IBEC representing small firms and it has expressed its concerns about the Bill. I refer to a statement by Pat Crotty, former chairperson, to the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. He stated that in its current format the Bill has the potential to cease all employment creation in small businesses. He said he was not exaggerating in commenting that from the perspective of the owners and managers of small businesses there is a risk in being subject to 20 new criminal offences just to employ someone and to grow the business. If this is the view among employers and even among those involved in Fianna Fáil social partnership, I cannot understand how this Bill can be anything other than one-sided.

I note the Minister of State has indicated that significant amendments will be tabled but the Bill as published will be opposed by Fine Gael and if it is passed in its current form Fine Gael will repeal it when in Government.

To address the point regarding the establishment of NERA as a separate agency, I do not believe this was necessary. In many ways this was as a result of the Gama scandal but the failure in Gama was not that we did not have a quango but rather that we did not have enough labour inspectors in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and they were not doing their job properly. The number of labour inspectors has been significantly increased and there are now 80 inspectors, which is to be welcomed. It was not necessary to set up a new State agency at considerable expense and to decentralise it to Carlow or any part of the country just to increase the number of inspectors as this could have been done in any case. Had there been enough labour inspectors and had they and the Department been doing their job properly, it would not have been necessary to set up an agency. In many ways the establishment of NERA was the typical Government response to every problem which is to set up another agency with its own headquarters, its own directors and board and its own website and this is the wrong approach. It is the Government's approach to every problem but has largely failed over the past number of years. I also have a difficulty with the title of the agency, NERA, National Employment Rights Authority. This is an organisation that is supposed to represent a consensus and to promote a culture of compliance but it does not sound like that to me. This is not like the Health and Safety Authority. The title of the National Employment Rights Authority implies that this is a body set up to be one-sided. It will be like a policeman receiving complaints from the victims, the employees, who will then raid the premises and prosecute the employers. The name alone reflects an attitude within the organisation and among those who have drafted the Bill. A more appropriate name would be the labour law authority or something like that rather than the National Employment Rights Authority, which sends all the wrong messages.

I am also concerned about the duplication of roles and further layers of State agencies and bureaucracies being created. In his contribution the Minister of State said that efficiency reviews are ongoing and that the Government is examining this entire area. This Bill was created in the minds of people two years ago. It was published last March. The Minister is obviously not in a hurry to do it because it is two years since it was thought up and almost a year since it was published. The Minister of State has made the case many times that the National Employment Rights Authority can operate without being put on a statutory footing and therefore I do not understand the reason to put forward this flawed Bill now. If the Government is doing efficiency reviews and examining the consolidation of State agencies, why does it not do that first instead of bringing in a Bill we may have to repeal or considerably amend when it completes that review of State agencies and efficiencies?

See this speech in context