Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Tóibín for introducing the legislation which the Government will not oppose. I accept the good intentions that lie behind it. However, in the months since Deputy O'Dea introduced a very similar Bill none of the imperfections in that Fianna Fáil Bill have been addressed. This Bill has not moved on the debate or set about dealing with the problems the Government needs to solve in order to provide legislation that will be robust in protecting low paid workers. I have listened to people say there is a need for the Government to provide reassurance. However, there would be no reassurance in it passing a Bill that contains so many holes that it would simply collapse in the face of its first legal challenge. That would not offer protection.

While good intentions are important, we are legislators and cannot simply sit back and say we would like the court decision to have been otherwise. The court decision has made more profound findings on the legislation than has been sought to be addressed in the Bill. The courts went considerably beyond finding that there was an excessive delegation of powers - in other words, those negotiating JLC and other agreements had been delegated too much power. The courts found that no principles had been set out to guide the decisions being made by JLCs and that such principles needed to be included in legislation. They found that the deliberations of JLCs had to clearly take into account such principles. They also found that where criminal sanctions were imposed on an employer - or anyone - for failing to do something, it had to be within policies clearly laid out by the Oireachtas. The courts have gone well beyond what was sought in 2008 at the time of the first challenge to the legislation which informed the Fianna Fáil Bill introduced in August 2009.

I accept Deputy Tóibín's admonition not to play politics. However, having appealed to the House not to play politics, his first words were that the Government was seeking to dismantle the JLC system, which is simply untrue. He continued to claim that the Government was seeking to cut basic JLC rates and said we were ignoring the views expressed in the Duffy-Walsh report. There is no proposal by the Government to cut basic JLC rates. He pretended that the report did not make things clear. It stated: "We believe that there are potentially substantial competitive gains that could be realised in some of the affected sectors by reforming the structure of decision making in JLCs so that the system is more flexible and responsive to the needs of particular sectors". This is not a Government or ministerial go-it-alone strategy; this is based on serious analysis by serious people. The Government is clear: we have sought to restore the minimum wage, which was the first change we made. We have set about reforming the structure and now need legislation that will be robust in the face of the legal decisions made. There is no backtracking or anything like it.

Deputy Tóibín again questioned whether we should have appealed the judgment or sought to introduce emergency legislation. As I said at the time, I considered these options very seriously. I sat down with the Attorney General and considered whether they were feasible and whether they would give protection to workers. The view of the Attorney General was absolutely clear-cut: neither of these options was robust and so could not be pursued. If we are serious about legislation, we cannot keep saying things should have been done differently and pretend that legal arguments are something we hide behind. We are legislators and legal arguments are what we deal in - we must address these arguments. I ask the Deputy to accept that we, in very good faith, investigated whether it would be credible to appeal and whether we could introduce emergency legislation, but that clearly did not prove possible.

We are setting about introducing serious legislation to protect workers in vulnerable sectors and that will be immune from challenge in the courts. That is set out clearly and at the core of the programme for Government.

I am sorry Deputy O'Dea is no longer in the Chamber. I need to take a deep intake of breath before responding to what he said, as he is living in a fantasy world. The policies his party pursued in government destroyed 350,000 jobs in the economy-----

See this speech in context