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

It is ironic that we are having a special session today to move amendments which the Minister of State wants to bring forward but that Deputies received telephone calls this morning to tell them that amendments they had submitted were not relevant to this Bill. It shows, as Deputy Tóibín said, a ham-fisted approach to what is supposed to be the most comprehensive review of the industrial relations machinery of the State. I do not have a major problem with the amendments the Minister of State proposes but make the point that they must be seen in the context of other very serious issues which are not addressed in the Bill.

We are talking about the key area of workers’ rights. Having rights is one thing but being able to exercise them is an entirely different matter. In order to vindicate those rights, a person must first have access to the industrial relations machinery of the State.

A key group of workers is excluded although this Bill should accommodate them, the pensioners who retain a live link with their employer because their pension is affected. Until now, the door to the industrial relations machinery has been shut to them. The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and the Minister for Social Protection have acknowledged that this system is an anomaly and needs to be addressed. It is not good enough that thousands of aviation pensioners will, at the start of January, experience a dramatic cut in their pension entitlements. The trustees have put forward a proposal that will see them lose six weeks of their income. They had no say in that process which went through the industrial relations machinery of the State and involved active members of that pension scheme, but neither the current pensioners nor the deferred groups had a voice in that process. That is absolutely reprehensible because some of the people who had a vote on the pension entitlements of others were not even members of the pension scheme. The vote organised by some of the unions in Aer Lingus involved people who were members of Aer Lingus Ireland whose employees are not members of the Irish Airlines Superannuation Scheme, IASS, pension scheme. It is a double kick. People not involved in that scheme decided on the living conditions of pensioners and pensioners did not have a voice. The other group are the deferred pensioners. These issues must be addressed.

It beggars belief that we are told a workplace relations Bill is not an appropriate forum to discuss this and that our amendments are not relevant because they sought to give pensioners as individuals and as a group an active voice in that process. It is a joke. We will deal much more comprehensively with the cuts imposed on the pensioners in respect of the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2014. The big picture remains to be addressed and people who have a live link with their pension scheme must be incorporated into this Bill or else this Bill only covers rights for some workers but not others.

See this speech in context