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

I wish to put a more fundamental point to the Taoiseach in asking him if he agrees that the very concept of so-called social partnership is, in fact, faudulent and a sham. Is the idea that employers and private corporations that exploit and abuse their workers on the one hand while on the other hand the workers themselves are partners not a contradiction? The Greyhound waste company last year peremptorily called its workers in to announce a 35% pay cut with their failure to accept it meaning redundancy. Is that partnership? Another example is JJ Rhatigan & Company, the beneficiary of huge State contracts for building schools and public buildings from the current Government. This company is behaving appallingly, coercing bricklayers and other workers to become bogus sub-contractors, for example, in order to savage the level of legal wages in the construction industry.

See this speech in context