Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Bill. It is unfortunate that it took two and a half years to come before the House from the time of the Gama and Irish Ferries debacles. I welcome the stated intention of the Minister of State, Deputy Billy Kelleher, to have an open attitude and that he will consider carefully constructive amendments from this side of the House. I welcome his attitude. I hope other Ministers follow suit.

I should declare to the House that I am an employer but I am also my party's spokesperson on workers' rights so I am wearing a couple of hats in this debate. In our operation at home, we do not regard it as a case of worker versus employer or the other way round. In our view, the development of a culture of teamwork is important and this is also important in Leinster House or in any place where there is work to be done. It is much better to achieve teamwork and harmony and a good working relationship as this results in a more constructive approach and better productivity. I echo the words of the two previous speakers in that I believe the vast majority of employers are fairly decent people who are trying to achieve a reasonable objective and have no intention of exploiting workers.

Unfortunately, confrontational attitudes exist. These attitudes go back centuries but some of them can be traced back to Thatcher and Reagan and the tone that was set internationally when those two monsters were in office on either side of the Atlantic. It is unfortunate that this attitude took hold and became currency and we can see the fruits of it now in our banking system.

This legislation will protect good employers. In the absence of this type of legislation, people will undercut and will breach the minimum wage rates and breach all sorts of employee rights in order to become more competitive but on an uneven playing field. The National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, has made substantial moves to bring about a level playing pitch. I hope that a culture of compliance can be achieved because such a culture is crucial to developing the harmony we all want to see in the workplace.

I refer to the lack of prosecutions. NERA has recorded a total of 2,334 breaches of employment law with one prosecution in 2007. In 2008, some 4,629 breaches were detected. Despite the number of prosecutions increasing to 80, this is still a tiny proportion of what was found, at less than 0.2% of the violations of employment legislation. This is a concern. It may be that NERA is adopting a softly-softly approach in its early days in order to become established. If this is the case, I hope it will have a step change fairly quickly and up the ante to try and deal with these wayward employers who are clearly in breach.

We all know that proceeding to prosecution is a very bureaucratic and costly endeavour. I will be tabling an amendment on Committee Stage to deal with this. I suggest a scheme of on-the-spot fines for some of the minor breaches. It would not be too difficult to work out the minutiae of such a scheme. It could be a scheme to ensure there are proper wages slips or proper documentation on display within the work premises. Such a scheme would ensure the inspectors could work more speedily and effectively in those minor cases. If an employer were found to be in breach of more serious matters and ended up in court, the judge could take cognisance of the earlier breaches which had been dealt with by way of on-the-spot fines. It is important to facilitate the inspectors by allowing them deal with these breaches in that way.

Other speakers referred to undocumented workers and this issue is also of great concern to me. While the issue has been elaborated by others, I will not develop it substantially but suffice to say I am concerned that undocumented workers have no rights at all. This is an area which needs to be dealt with in this legislation and we must provide for those people.

Another section of workers of concern to me are the domestic workers. While this issue has been discussed in previous debates, it is very difficult to reach these people because they tend to be isolated. They are like the servants of old in that they are ensconced in a private house and are hidden away and may not have access to the information they require in order to be able to substantiate their rights and entitlements.

A number of other areas are also of concern. At the recent launch of NERA's campaign, one employer said she did not know the proper rates nor had she proper information about employment rights. There is need for a publicity campaign in order to make employers and employees aware of the information at hand. This could be carried out by the Revenue Commissioners or some such avenue. This might be more cost-effective than a big media campaign. A publicity campaign is required to make people more aware of their responsibilities. I took that employer at face value on the day and she sounded genuine. People who are new to enterprise and new to employment situations require some enhanced information.

Will the Minister of State consider having NERA publish in multiple languages a series of the various documents required in the workplace and making them available to employers at cost price? This would enhance people's knowledge of their responsibilities.

While I welcome section 26, which requires that a report shall be sent to the Minister annually, could the report be laid before both Houses? This would be a useful addition to the Bill. I have dealt with the notices on domestic workers, a matter that I hope the Minister of State will consider.

Compliance with registered employment agreements, REAs, is another issue, but I do not know why it is such a concern for some employers. REAs are arrived at by consensus between workers' representatives and employers.

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