Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

It is not just in the health area that the Government and Ministers are running into difficulties. Has the Taoiseach given the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport an option on a job share, where he can balance his ministerial responsibilities with a role as a mouthpiece for the management of semi-State companies in their battles against the workforce? It seems that not content with his unfettered access to the airwaves last weekend, where he could berate and bully Dublin Bus workers and warn them that if they have the audacity or neck to vote for a fifth time against attempts to reduce their pay and conditions, those conditions and pay would be butchered anyway, with the full backing of the Government.

Yesterday the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, came into this House during Topical Issues and it was like an audience with Christoph Mueller himself. Against a backdrop of an unprecedented move by the Aer Lingus CEO to ignore the industrial relations machinery of the State, Deputy Varadkar told us that it had nothing to do with him and our 25% shareholding was irrelevant. Then he told us that the increased traffic into Shannon Airport was a good thing, and nobody would disagree with that. However, he then boldly stated that IMPACT's objections to the new arrangement would make the Shannon cabin crew base commercially unsustainable for the company and it would have little choice but to close that base. That is utter nonsense. Four competitive US airlines operate the aircraft on that route out of Dublin and all of them operate it with a cabin crew complement of six staff. None of them has a problem with commercial unsustainability. A cabin crew of six is the industrial norm.

Let us be clear. The real agenda here is to stand on and erode working conditions built up over generations and to facilitate a race to the bottom. The staff were prepared to consider a staffing arrangement of four or five, but were told it would be four or the base would be shut down. Shutting the base down involves the loss of 87 Aer Lingus jobs, some of which have been held for decades. This is a declaration of war. Is this a deliberate strategy? To take on one group of workers may be deemed a misfortune, but to take on two looks like a deliberate policy of union busting. Given the Taoiseach has unleashed Christoph Mueller in Aer Lingus and is now sending him into An Post, is the Government engaged in a deliberate policy to eliminate secure, permanent, pensionable employment and to undermine the industrial relations machinery of the State? If it is not, will the Taoiseach order his hound dogs into the Labour Court to deal with these issues in the traditional way?

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