Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the matter, which I am taking on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Humphreys, who cannot attend the House this evening.

The Labour Court is an independent adjudicative body under the remit of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and has discharged its statutory function in the matter. The Minister has no function in respect of the implementation or otherwise of the Labour Court recommendation in the case. The Labour Court recommended an enhanced redundancy package for a group of workers in Capita following a referral by the trade union Unite to the Labour Court under section 21 of the Industrial Relations Act 1969. Although referrals under that section of the Act require the referring party to agree to be bound by the court’s recommendation, there is no obligation on the other party to be bound by or accept the recommendation. In this case, the responding party, as is its right, did not attend the hearing of the court and the court did not have the benefit of its position in framing the recommendation. In line with its statutory obligation, the court issued a recommendation based on the information presented to it.

As regards trade union recognition, Article 40 of the Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to freely associate and join unions. It has been established in several cases before the courts that the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association does not guarantee workers the right to have their union recognised for the purposes of collective bargaining. Industrial relations in Ireland is voluntary in nature and it has been the consistent policy of successive Governments to promote collective bargaining through the laws of the country and the development of an institutional framework supportive of a voluntary system of industrial relations premised on freedom of contract and association.

To improve the situation for employees, the Government enacted the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2015 to facilitate employees’ rights to engage in collective bargaining. That provides a mechanism through which the fairness of the employment conditions of workers can be assessed where collective bargaining does not take place. It ensures that such workers, aided by a trade union, even where the trade union is not formally recognised by the employer, can advance claims about remuneration and conditions of employment and have them determined by the Labour Court based on comparator companies. Any determinations by the Labour Court in that context are enforceable before the Circuit Court.

The Government always encourages all sides in a trade dispute to engage constructively and in good faith, with a view to all parties involved making every effort to reach agreement and to come to an arrangement that recognises the concerns of both sides.

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