Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Labour Party will not agree to the Order of Business and to this proposal in particular. We are just a few days away from a major strike in this country. In the past number of days I have asked the Taoiseach what action the Government is taking to avert that strike. I have urged him and his Ministers to seriously engage in discussions and negotiations to try to avert the strike, which will close every school, reduce hospitals to merely a Christmas Day level of service and which will have every public office in the country closed. The entire public service operation of the country will be closed next Tuesday.

There is nothing on the Order Paper today indicating that a Minister will come in here to explain what is being done to try to avert that dispute. The Tánaiste is the line Minister who has responsibility for industrial relations in the country. She does not have any proposals to avert it. The only matter on the Order Paper today is a tacit acceptance by Government that the strike is going ahead anyway because there is a proposal here that there will be no Adjournment debates on Tuesday next, presumably because, not only will there not be sufficient staff in the House to manage that, but there will not be staff right up to principal officer level in the Departments concerned to prepare responses to Adjournment debates for Tuesday next. If there were ever a giveaway that the Government has tacitly accepted that the strike will go ahead and that it is making no effort to avert it, it is that particular proposal, which is on the Order Paper today, effectively stating that the Government accepts there will be a strike on Tuesday next and it does not propose to do anything.

I do not know of a Government anywhere in Europe or elsewhere that would take the same kind of blasé attitude to a major strike in the public service where the entire service will be closed down. It is as if the Government wants this strike to take place.

See this speech in context