Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As someone who represented workers under the previous two Administrations, I find it laughable that the Labour Party is talking about workers' rights. It had five years to make a difference to the lives of working people. I do not mean the difference it made when it followed Fianna Fáil's lead and cut the pay of serving public servants, I mean a real, positive difference to the lives of workers and a discernible difference to the lives of public servants for the better. I will focus my remarks on the issue of precarious work in the public service.

Until relatively recently, I earned a living representing public servants in both the education and health sectors, so I speak from personal experience when I say that while Fianna Fáil might have been the first to introduce precarious work, it rose at a rate of knots under the stewardship of the man who now leads the Labour Party. Teachers, nurses, university lecturers, tutors, porters, child care workers - there was hardly a profession or job in the public service where the Labour Party did not facilitate the casualisation of labour, either through refusing to support mandatory union recognition or allowing Departments and agencies to issue the kind of contracts that would make William Martin Murphy blush. Sinn Féin supports mandatory union recognition for all State contracts because where the State spends money, workers' rights should be protected and upheld.

See this speech in context