Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Employers are getting away with virtually eliminating all the other rights which, as I have said, have been built up painstakingly over decades. A simple expedient like that could mean that the Bill is worthless. I know that Deputy Mick Barry has a Bill to deal with this phenomenon. I have not had the opportunity to read it yet, but we will have to think seriously about amending this Bill along those lines because, with all due respect to Deputy Mick Barry - I am sure his is an excellent Bill - but in my experience, Private Members' Bills, however heavily supported or well intentioned they are, have a habit of disappearing into the Bermuda triangle.

I am not naive. I know that legislation could not be devised tomorrow that would have the powers of a time machine to take people into the past where employment was more secure and people could work all their lives and finish up with a defined benefit pension. Everything has a context and the context now is different, but this new context has opened up an opportunity to exploit employees in a very unfair and unjust way. We have an obligation to legislate as well as we possibly can to prevent that from happening. The evidence of exploitation is all around us. I have seen it myself. I am sure every Member of this House has had people visit his or her clinic giving examples of it. The people who are being exploited are our neighbours, friends and our constituents and, in some case, members of our families. We have an obligation to them and a moral obligation to the workforce as a whole to ensure that changes in the economic climate cannot be allowed to create a situation whereby they can be used as cheap disposable labour.

Fianna Fáil will support the Bill on Second Stage, but we will be requiring it to be substantially amended on Committee Stage.

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