Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I understand the desire of Deputies in supporting this amendment. However, putting into a Bill of this nature such a provision implies there is in place a sanction for an employer who fails to address a matter but no such sanction is implied or provided for. What the Deputies seek to introduce is a regulatory obligation which would have no oversight mechanism. I will ensure that the guidelines issued to employers includes this as good practice. We should not provide in primary legislation that this would be a statutory obligation when we are not providing for an enforcement mechanism for such a provision. I do not believe there should be an enforcement mechanism for such a provision.

We have made good progress reorganising employment rights and industrial relations agencies. A pilot conciliation scheme, which provides that queries received from temporary agency workers be forwarded immediately to a conciliation arrangement, will be introduced during the first half of this year. Under this scheme the employer will be made aware of the situation and his or her obligations in that regard. Obviously, if the employer refuses to address the matter it will then proceed to a hearing. However, the Government is moving to introduce arrangements whereby such queries that clearly ought to be resolved through simple conciliation and clarification of the position would not on their arrival enter a lengthy queue to wait for a hearing. The Government is attempting to stream away all such cases and to reduce the number of cases that sometimes go to highly legalistic tribunals that serve the interests of neither the workers nor the employers. Consequently, rather than including this proposal as an item of primary legislation that is set out in the law in the manner suggested by Deputy O'Dea, I instead seek to enshrine it within the implementation guidelines that will be issued. In addition, the entire thrust of the reform I am attempting to introduce is to streamline the employment rights bodies. It will be piloted, hopefully will be successful and then will be mainstreamed quickly, thereby streaming away challenges of this nature in which the facts of the case are pretty clear, thus avoiding the type of clogging to which Deputy Clare Daly rightly refers.

See this speech in context