Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In recent years quite a number of workers have joined the public sector on insecure temporary contracts and have been retained on successive contracts beyond the permissible period. When such workers took legal cases seeking permanent status, they succeeded, but were then granted conditions of employment inferior to those in their original contracts. Are any such workers employed by the Department of the Taoiseach?

The Taoiseach should be aware that JobBridge has been discredited by ordinary people, despite the fact that he lauded the scheme highly in this House. JobBridge has been used to provide cheap labour to private companies and, more recently, the public sector. School secretaries, special needs assistants and public sector cleaners have been taken on through JobBridge, so it is just a source of cheap labour.

Is it not fraudulent, for example, in the Taoiseach's Department or any public sector Department, to take on internships or internees under that scheme when one of the factors that has been put forward in favour of it is that JobBridge interns may get employment with the host company? That is impossible in the public sector. They cannot get employment because of the barrier, in place up to recently in any case, in the public sector, including in the Taoiseach's Department.

In reality the Taoiseach is flattering people to deceive. Why would they not profess themselves delighted if the Taoiseach happened to meet them in the corridor? There are hardly going to complain to the Taoiseach about it. The reality is that it is cheap labour. It is filling gaps that should be filled by permanent full-time staff. It is filling the gaps left by the reduction in public sector numbers over the years. Worst of all is the Gateway project under which hundreds of workers on the dole are to be taken on by local authorities to work for nothing in reality. They will be doing jobs that should be done and would have been done previously by full-time public sector or local authority workers. We should call things by their names. I call on the Taoiseach to respond.

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