Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The chaos landed on hundreds of thousands of Ryanair passengers in the past week is really a case of chickens coming home to roost. The so-called magic of Ryanair and Mr. Michael O'Leary has been exposed as nothing more than the vulgar, bootboy tactics of vicious exploitation meted out on its crew and its pilots. I will not repeat the stories with which people are familiar from the airwaves - the charging of pilots €15 an hour to download an application form; the €30,000 to pay for their own training; and Ryanair taking on people with a couple of hundred hours' training experience. Is it any wonder that people are leaving it in droves? Is it any wonder that it is getting away with it given that it is facilitated by the operation of the State in this country?

Given the enormous safety risk for passengers of having pilots on zero-hour contracts, what is the Minister doing to tighten up the regulation in this area and improving collective bargaining? Ryanair carries 130 million passengers a year and employs tens of thousands of people under an Irish flag of convenience. The scam has been perpetuated - the myth, if one likes - by the pretence that crew based all over Europe are Irish crew on Irish contracts with recourse only to Irish courts. They get away with it because Ireland has no definition of what a self-employed person is. Therefore, we have agencies such as Brookfield, a tax haven in Gibraltar, and contracts that stipulate the services of a pilot are provided on a required and-or casual basis. There is no obligation on it to provide work. The European Cockpit Association blames these contracts for risks and for pilots turning up when sick when it is not safe for them to do so.

The European Court of Justice has blocked this. Ryanair is set to appeal. What is the Government's attitude to this because Ireland has for too long facilitated this appalling vista?

See this speech in context