Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As someone who has been a shop steward all my working life and who continues to take up workers' cases, I had to check the calendar to make sure it was not April Fools' Day when I saw this motion. After five years of Labour in government, we witnessed the spectacle of the Minister for Finance getting up to deliver the previous budget and bragging that 700,000 workers were being taken out of the USC net, meaning 700,000 workers in this State have annual incomes of less than €13,000 because of the race to the bottom that has taken place under Labour's watch. The Labour Party Deputies have some neck bringing this motion forward.

I welcome and will support the Sinn Féin amendment before the House, which rightly recognises the failure of the previous Government to defend and protect workers' rights. If we do not acknowledge that at the start and know where we are coming from, we will not be able to point to where we are going. It is correct to talk about Clerys, but there have been many other cases during the past five years. Workers have been locked out of their jobs, denied wages and redundancy payments and in some cases intimidated and sacked as a result of their union membership, often by companies making handsome profits. The amendment correctly points out that we do need strong labour laws, which I support, but even Labour's motion itself exposes how divorced the party is from reality.

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