Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to support this important Bill, the Industrial Relations (Right to Access) (Amendment) Bill 2016, brought forward by Deputy Cullinane and backed by a number of unions, including Mandate, the Technical Engineering & Electrical Union, TEEU, the Financial Services Union and ICTU.

In recent years, Ireland has become a leader in the developed world for low-paid work, with the latest figures showing us second in the OECD in this regard. The Government's recent survey on income and living conditions, SILC, report backed this up, finding that 105,000 people in Ireland are now "working poor" - in employment but unable to escape poverty. Precarious work practices are also rampant. Ireland has the second highest level of underemployment in the EU 15. This reflects information from the International Labour Organization showing part-time work here doubled between 2004 and 2014. Bogus self-employment has also skyrocketed, a prominent example being the number of self-employed people working in construction, which has risen from 24% in 2004 to over 40% today. In other words, almost half of construction workers are in bogus self-employment. Under the Minister's watch, large and important sectors of the Irish economy, from retail, restaurants and hotels to social care, construction and farm labour, are being turned over to part-time, low-paid and precarious work. One of the key factors in this is an aggressive campaign on behalf of exploitative businesses to keep trade unions out. This is what this Bill, modelled on legislation already in place in Australia and New Zealand, aims to remedy. It aims to give trade unions the right to access workplaces where they have members on site.

In recent years in Ireland, trade unions have been physically removed from the car parks of hugely profitable companies such as IKEA. They have been blocked from building sites on which their members have been seriously injured. They have been unable to set foot on construction projects such as schools, funded with taxpayer money, where exploitative employment practices continue right under our nose. I spoke yesterday to an official from the Financial Services Union who told me he had been denied access repeatedly to workplaces in the Irish Financial Services Centre, IFSC, where people were dealing with serious cases of work related stress.

A number of years ago, the Taoiseach promised Ireland would be the best little country in which to do business. I put it to the House that the Government has allowed Ireland to become a wild west for work. However, it is not only Fine Gael that is refusing to stand up for workers' rights today. Fianna Fáil is joining it in opposing the Bill. There are some Tesco workers in the Gallery today, fighting very bravely against an unscrupulous employer for their legal contracts to be respected. Deputy Barry Cowen joined those workers on their picket in Tullamore recently. Meanwhile, their union must carry out ballots in hotels and pubs because they are banned from the staffrooms in Tesco. That is what this Bill is about. Deputy Cowen now intends to vote for this situation to continue. The Bill is a litmus test and a small but hugely necessary step for workers' rights, and we will find out much more about where people stand by how they vote on the Bill.

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