Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

As a contribution to the challenge we face over the need to protect and secure the wages and conditions of those employed in areas governed by the JLC and ERO system, I welcome the publication of this Bill and the opportunity to speak on its provisions. Elements of the Bill attract my support and that of the Labour Party and Government in general. The basic principals are philosophically sound and it represents a reasonable effort to address some of the fall-out from the Feeney judgment two weeks ago.

However, even to the untrained eye, the frailties inherent in the legislation are all too apparent. In whatever way we slice and dice it, the Bill is essentially a reheated version of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill 2009. However, that was then and this is now, and in light of the Feeney judgment, we have entered an entirely new dimension. The JLC and ERO system which has served our economy and society well since its inception has been struck down as unconstitutional. Despite what some members of the Opposition would have us believe, the direct implications of the judgment are such that no quick-fix solution exists that can be taken off the shelf, dusted down and represented as something it is not.

We need fresh thinking to deal with a fundamentally altered scenario while achieving the same outcomes enjoyed by those employed under the JLC and ERO system. It would be disingenuous and dangerously misleading for anyone in this House to suggest that this, or indeed any other legislative proposition that has been put forward, whether in this House or outside in recent days, is sufficiently robust to achieve the outcome on which there is a degree of unanimity around the House.

I accept the Bill represents a genuine effort to have one substantial element of the Feeney judgment settled, which is the issue to do with the glaring absence of strong guiding policies and principles from this law-making body in terms of wage setting mechanisms. This is all well and good up to a point. However, any reasonable analysis of this effort presented to us by Fianna Fáil is completely silent on the entire issue of property rights. Not just in this instance, but in a whole raft of trade union and employment rights legislation, this constitutional issue of property rights has reared its unwelcome head. It is grotesque and, frankly, disturbing to me that in the context of this and other matters, the issue of the protection of individual property rights appears to have primacy in our Constitution over the rights of the individual citizen to a decent living wage and, moreover, the right to have those circumstances protected. This is a matter that should be pursued and examined shortly by the constitutional convention.

Last night Deputies O'Dea and Niall Collins, from the party that brought us such hits as the slashing of the national minimum wage and the blanket bank guarantee, were straining at the leash to have a go at the Labour Party, asking us what we stand for. It could be argued that the crocodile tears they shed on this serious matter are an insult to honest crocodiles everywhere. As Deputy White said yesterday evening, we stand for legislation that will work and not for legislation that is clearly frail and frankly a bit on the anaemic side. We will not do a Grand Old Duke of York on it and pretend that if this so-called emergency legislation is passed, everything will be fine in the morning, which it will not.

Notwithstanding all of that, the Bill requires additional examination and has a degree of merit, and I support what the Minister is doing now and what we will be doing over the summer period to address comprehensively the issues facing us and the 200,000 workers who need our protection and need a new structure to protect and vindicate their interests and rights robustly and vigorously.

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