Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The pilots at Ryanair have mutinied against their pay and working conditions and I congratulate them on having done so.

The men and women who fly Ryanair aeroplanes, work to a Ryanair schedule and wear Ryanair uniforms operate under the fiction that they are self-employed. This is social dumping by Ryanair on a grand scale. There is a scandal in the context of sick pay, holiday pay and zero-hour contracts.

This summer, the Revenue, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, organised a joint raid on a building site at Dolphin's Barn to combat bogus self-employment, and rightly so. Why has that not been done with Ryanair? I put it to the Minister that it is because the company is protected by the establishment that fetes it, by the parties that invite Michael O'Leary to their think-ins and by the Government, which holds up Ryanair as a glittering symbol and shining example of neoliberal capitalism. I have two questions for the Minister. First, does he not feel that symbol has been somewhat tarnished as a result of the events of recent weeks? What does he say to the proposal I put to him that the State has turned a blind eye to Ryanair's social dumping and is, therefore, part of the problem? What is the Government going to do to change that?

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