Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 and 30 together.

There is a commitment in the programme for Government to ensure that Irish law on employees' right to engage in collective bargaining is consistent with recent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. This process will require consultation with stakeholders, including employer and worker representatives, and a review of the experience of the operation of the existing legislative framework as put in place under the Industrial Relations Acts of 2001 and 2004 and the consequences of the litigation that has arisen in the course of the operation of these Acts.

The report of the independent review of employment regulation orders and registered employment agreement wage setting mechanisms noted that the principle that the JLC system should only operate where, for whatever reason, collective bargaining does not take place already is recognised by the provision at section 46 of the Industrial Relations Act 1990. This section provides that the Labour Court may exclude from the scope of a JLC an employment to which a registered employment agreement, REA, applies. This provision has been availed of by a number of enterprises in recent years, especially in the mushroom growing sector.

However, under existing legislation, such exclusion can only apply where the remuneration and conditions of employment provided for by the REA are not less favourable than those provided for by the relevant employment regulation order, ERO. The review concluded that this qualification limits the capacity of parties to conclude agreements which may be more suited to the circumstances of individual employments but which may be regarded as less favourable than the ERO in some particulars. In this context, the report recommended that the legislation be amended to provide that the court may exclude an undertaking from the scope of a JLC through a collective agreement, negotiated at enterprise, group or sub-sector level, that is registered with the Labour Court.

I endorse the review's acknowledgment of the primacy of collective bargaining. How this recommendation can be progressed will, like other recommendations in the report, be considered in the context of the action plan for the implementation of all proposals dealt with in the report as well as other issues raised by the report which I intend to bring to Government shortly.

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