David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is an acknowledgement of all of the things it failed to do during the past five years. I accept that the Labour Party has at least used its motion to outline all of these failures. This must be said because the Labour Party cannot come to the Chamber, present the motion and pretend the past five years did not happen.

There is a need to strengthen workers' rights. We brought forward many Bills in the past five years which sought to protect and enhance workers' rights but these were rejected by the previous Government, of which the Labour Party was a part. We have an ongoing situation whereby many trade union officials are being denied the right to access places of work to engage with their members. This is happening in many retail outlets throughout the State. The issue of right to access was not dealt with by the previous Government. Is the Labour Party now stating that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will do it, even though it already had the chance to do so? The previous Government had a massive majority but it failed to take action in this regard.

We still do not have trade union recognition. Many companies refuse to engage with trade unions and will continue to do so. Tactical insolvency is not a statutory or criminal offence. We can wash our hands when these things happen, as was the case with Clerys, but unless we change the law and introduce legislation, nothing will happen. We are preparing legislation - similar to that which we introduced in the past - with solutions to these problems and we will bring forward. I hope on this occasion when we do so we will have the support of the party which tabled the motion yesterday.

We must end the abuse of if-and-when contracts. This is something on which we campaigned and we tabled motions in the past which were not supported by the Labour Party. We need to combat bogus self-employment. We need to do much more. A number of reports need to be implemented. Last year, I published a report on low pay, decent work and a living wage in consultation with all parties represented on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. I hope the report will be published, along with the Cahill-Duffy expert examination and review of laws on the protection of employee interests. These reports need to be implemented as quickly as possible.

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