Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Where is his energy and urgency when it comes to protecting worker's rights in this country? Over the past year we have seen a litany of cases where workers in Jane Norman, La Senza, Lagan Brick, Vita Cortex, Game and Connolly Shoes in my constituency have been treated with despicable contempt by rogue employers. The latest victim of rogue employers and the Government failure to protect workers are 110 workers in Irish Cement working in counties Limerick and Meath. These workers have for three decades not been involved in any industrial action but were forced out on strike on 3 April because Irish Cement has refused to pay a Labour Court-recommended set of bonuses to the workers. This is despite the fact the workers agreed to a rationalisation programme three years ago, cut 33% of their staff and raised productivity by 40%.

What is positively disturbing about Irish Cement's failure to pay these workers the money it owes them is that the parent company of Irish Cement is Cement Roadstone Holdings, CRH, one of the largest building materials companies in the world-----

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