Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Minister has had the opportunity since last week to familiarise himself a little more with some of the issues behind the Aer Lingus cabin crew dispute. I am hoping that the Minister may have had a chance to send someone along to the picket lines at Shannon to talk to the workers there and to understand why, for the first time in many years, over 1,000 workers believed they had no alternative but to engage in industrial action last week, an action which saw the virtual grounding of the Aer Lingus fleet with 200 flights cancelled.

I put it to the Minister last week in the House that how he would deal with this dispute would be one of the first measures of the post-election tests of this Government to determine whether it had listened to people. I do not think he has done a great job of it. Last week the company initially announced it would meet the workers, the first time after refusing to do so for three years, but no date was set and the strike went ahead. Last night insult was added to injury when on the eve of the so-called bilateral talks supposedly to resolve the issues, letters were sent to workers' homes intimidating them and withdrawing their staff privileges. This is hardly the antics of a company that wanted to resolve anything. It is like a husband agreeing to go to relationship counselling and then kicking his wife around the kitchen the night before. It is outrageous, bully-boy tactics by management and the Minister has stood by in silence and done nothing about it. In my opinion, lack of action condones such antics.

These actions by management were outrageous, particularly in the context of the weekend's goading and clamouring for such action by Michael O'Leary, the poster boy of anti-trade unionism-----

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