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

I wish to raise something that is not directly related to the Bill, although others have rightly brought it up, which is the Paris Bakery situation. I know the Minister was down there this week and many of us joined the protest yesterday. We have had a litany of situations like the Paris Bakery, including Vita Cortex, Vincenza, Jane Norman and Connolly Shoes. Time and again, employers are simply refusing to give workers their entitlements, including wages and holiday pay, yet they can get away with it.

In the extraordinary case of Connolly Shoes, pickets have been in place for four years. The Government has been made aware of such situations time and again and nothing has been done. It is extraordinary that this can be allowed to continue. I can only assume it is due to Fine Gael's predilection for the idea that we must not do anything to hamper so-called enterprise, risk taking and entrepreneurialism, and if we took legislative measures to deal with this situation it might hamper so-called enterprise. It is unacceptable because this is enterprise where the workers take the risks.

There is no risk to employers because they can walk away from their obligations to workers. The employers take risks on behalf of workers without their knowledge. The workers discover one day that the business has been wound up, changed its name or found some other mechanism by which it can evade its obligations to its workers, who are left high and dry without a penny. Although this unacceptable situation has been known to the Government for at least two years, it has done nothing. Where is the emergency legislation on it? Although, sadly, I very much doubt it will be forthcoming, it must be said again.

There are three categories of provision regarding the Bill: positive provisions; provisions that are of deep concern or obnoxious; and provisions that should be there but are not. As one must put a positive foot forward in these often dark and grim times, I will begin with the positive elements. It is positive that equal treatment should be applied to self-employed people and particularly to their spouses and partners. For some time, self-employed people have been saying they would be happy to make the extra contributions that would mean their spouses and family members would be entitled to the same social welfare benefits as everybody else. This is a response by the Government to something self-employed people have been saying for some time, and I welcome it.

Similarly, the moves on family income supplement, FIS, seem positive in that they take account of changes in family circumstances, such as people moving apart, and will not exclude people from entitlement to FIS because of such changes. Although not a very positive issue, it is a step forward that where pension schemes are being restructured people should be properly notified of it and have some recourse to the courts. Although the details need to be examined carefully, I broadly welcome these positive provisions, in case anybody ever says we on this side of the House are only negative.

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