Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In the context of amendment No. 169, the Minister of State pointed out that the transgressions are not identified within the amendment. If those transgressions were identified in an amendment, would the Minister of State have a change of heart during the course of the debate in the Seanad on this Bill? I understand that the Minister of State is not seeking to create a body of employment law within this particular Bill. However, the Bill offers us an opportunity to strengthen employee rights and to ensure that individuals who have been mistreated by unscrupulous employers and companies have an opportunity to hold those companies to account - for reasonable amounts of money - in the wind-up process and elsewhere. While the Minister of State is correct that an approach to the High Court would be a very unwieldy and difficult activity for an individual to proceed with, the very fact that employees' rights are written in law would encourage most companies to take those rights more seriously. Therefore, the law in its own right serves as a guideline for the proper functioning of society. It is only in a small minority of cases that it is necessary to pursue that law through the courts.

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