Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

I am not sure if that is enough time but I will do my best. I have a great deal to say about this Bill. Perhaps the Chair will advise me when I reach 29 minutes.

The Bill deals principally with the procedures used to enact employment regulation orders, EROs, and registered employment agreements, REAs, into law and make them legally binding. There are some miscellaneous provisions in the Bill which give HSE workers, local authority staff and non-teaching staff of VECs access to the rights commissioner, Labour Relations Commission, LRC, and the Labour Court. I have no objection to that aspect of the Bill and do not propose to comment on it in detail. I welcome the fact that the Minister has given an indication that he might accept the amendment proposed by Senator Ryan in the Seanad relating to retired and former workers. I would support that amendment and hope the advice from the Attorney General is favourable in that regard.

Providing for HSE workers, local authority staff and non-teaching VEC staff to have access to rights commissioners shows how disjointed and disorganised our entire labour rights system is. It is an alphabet jungle. I do not understand why some workers can go to a rights commissioner and others cannot. If one was setting up this system from scratch, one would have just one body to enforce labour law, although it might be necessary to have separate entities for the equality aspects. That same body would deal with workers' complaints. Above that one would establish some type of quasi-judicial system which would hear appeals. This Bill does not change the fact that some people can access the rights commissioner service and others cannot. Teaching staff in VECs still cannot access that service. One might say that the unions do not want them to, but that does not matter. Why should there be different laws for the same people?

In our system we have the office of the Minister of State with responsibility for labour in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the National Employment Rights Authority which enforces the EROs, REAs and the minimum wage. We have the rights commissioner service, which is part of the Labour Relations Commission and which hears complaints relating to fixed term issues, working time issues, unfair dismissal, minimum wage, payment of wages and transfer of undertakings. We then have the LRC, which has a slightly different job, and the Labour Court, which has a different job again. Its job is sometimes judicial and sometimes not. Sometimes it gives determinations and at other times it gives advisories. It also runs the JLC system. On top of that there is the National Implementation Body, which has various roles, and an Employment Appeals Tribunal, which has another set of roles. One can take unfair dismissal and redundancy cases to the tribunal, if one has not taken them to one of the other bodies already.

The entire system needs to be cleaned up, and I know the Minister long enough to believe that he probably agrees with me. I hope that as Minister of State with responsibility for labour he will clean up that alphabet jungle. I will not even mention the Equality Tribunal. The system is confusing for workers and exposes employers, often unfairly, to multiple claims. Deputy Fahey has drawn attention to the extent of claim shopping by people. The entire area requires a total overhaul and the miscellaneous amendments in this Bill demonstrate that. The Bill might be extending the rights commissioner service to some workers but it is still barred to others. There are some recommendations on this issue in the McCarthy report but I do not agree with them. However, the issue must be addressed and this Bill is a lost opportunity to do so. I will come back to this on another occasion.

I will now focus on issues relating to employment regulation orders and registered employment agreements. It is interesting that the constitutionality of the current system was first questioned by Mr. Justice Henchy in 1979, the year I was born. I believe the Minister is only a little older than me. This issue has been floating around for a long time; it has taken 30 years to bring this legislation to the Oireachtas. Of course, it follows a case taken by the Irish Hotels Federation and an ongoing case in the courts involving the Quick Service Food Alliance. It should not be a surprise to anybody that what has been happening for the last 30, or even 50, years with employment regulation orders and registered employment agreements has been unconstitutional and therefore unlawful, although I do not know why it has taken so long to introduce legislation to clear up the matter. However, this Bill does not do that. Unfortunately, it is a reaction to the cases now before the courts. It is also minimalist, and a lost opportunity to overhaul the system.

The JLC, ERO and REA system needs to be totally overhauled. It is laden with anomalies, inconsistencies and absurdities. Take the example of the hotel employment regulation order. I am aware that the two JLCs have been merged. That aside, the employment regulation order for the hotel sector applies to County Dublin but not to Dublin city, for example, it applies to a hotel in Fingal in my constituency or to a hotel in the airport but it does not apply to a hotel in Tallaght. The Acting Chairman will note that I have mentioned Tallaght in this debate. It does not apply to a hotel in town, a hotel in Killiney and a hotel in Dundrum, if it is in the old borough of Dún Laoghaire. This order does not apply to Dublin city, the old borough of Dún Laoghaire or the city of Cork but it does apply to County Cork, County Kerry and County Dublin. That is ridiculous, and it should be addressed in the Bill.

If one examines contract cleaning for example, the order applies differently in Dublin city than in Dublin county. In fact, Dublin county does not exist any more, in legal terms, except for the purposes of the Labour Court and the VEC. That does not make any sense either because I live in Dublin and know that contract cleaners go to different parts of the greater Dublin area all the time. It is absurd that a different set of employment regulation orders applies to cleaners when they are in Blanchardstown as opposed to Chapelizod, which is in the city but is only three miles away. I am not sure if it applies to where they do the work or where their workplace is based. It is a very bizarre system.

If one looks at catering, there is something similar. There is one set of catering rules for Dublin city and Dún Laoghaire; for the rest of the county, including Fingal and south Dublin there is a different set. For hairdressing, there is one set of rules for Cork city. There is also a different set for Dublin, Dún Laoghaire and Bray, but in the rest of the country there is no hairdressing employment regulation order at all. For example, one set of rules applies in Bray, which are the same as apply in Killiney, but they do not apply in Arklow. I do not understand that; it is absurd. If it took the Government 30 years to write this Bill, it could have done a better job and included some measures to deal with those issues.

If the Minister of State does not know what hairdressing is, in this Schedule "hairdressing" includes the following operations performed on hair growing on the head, face or neck of a male or female person, that is to say, lathering, shaving, cutting, singeing, shampooing, waving, setting, dressing, tinting, dyeing, bleaching or similar operations - I am not sure what similar operations are.

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