Dáil debates

Thursday, 19 April 2018

Extreme Weather (Miscellaneous Provisions Bill) 2018: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

4:05 pm

Photo of Gerry AdamsGerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have to say i dtús go bhfuil brón orm nach bhfuil an Rialtas ag tabhairt tacaíochta don Bhille seo. I am disappointed that the Government is not going to support the Bill. At the risk of being totally and absolutely wrong, I presume the Minister of State did not write the script I have before me. It has taken me the short time that it took the Minister of State to read out the script to try to absorb it.

I note that the Minister of State said on at least three occasions that it is well-intended, and that is nice. Then at the end, the Minister of State said that the Minister for Justice and Equality is open to engagement in respect of the criminal justice proposals in the Bill. We are up for that engagement and I would like to follow through on that. I have done this in the past with other legislation when we have worked through the details of some issues with officials.

I will get to the bones of what the Minister of State has said - I have not had the opportunity to study the script in great detail. The key to his statement is contained on page five of the script delivered. The Minister of State said that industry will argue the Bill will adversely affect company productivity if the unnecessary closure of businesses occurs, impacting on businesses in terms of business continuity and competitiveness. I believe that is the Government's problem. In other words, business and industry representatives anticipate this measure as meaning they will have to pick up the tab for a worker who would not be expected to turn in to work but who would have to be paid for it.

The Minister of State also said that in a likely extreme event employers should assess the risks arising from the place of work or the work environment and from all work activities. Those in Met Éireann are the people who assess that. The Government did a good job during the few days of extreme weather recently. The Government based all the warnings, instructions, guidance and appeals on what those in Met Éireann were saying. They are the people who tell us if we have a pending problem.

I got involved in this because the family of Fintan Goss from Ravensdale got in touch with my office. He was a young man on his way home from work. His child was christened beside his coffin. The family got in touch with my office so we discussed this and decided to try to bring something forward. One could say it was a fluke or a freak accident - we do not know how things work out in life at all.

5 o’clock

The reason his family got in touch with us is that they wanted to ensure that this did not happen to someone else. This young man felt obliged to go to work. The same thing happened elsewhere and two other people, Michael Pyke and Clare O'Neill, were killed. That is the motivation and context for this Bill. I commend the Goss and the other families who, in the midst of their grief, sought to ensure that other families are protected in the future.

The Met Éireann website states: "The core rationale for issuing Weather Warnings is to protect the lives and livelihoods of all the nation's citizens." It is very clear. In other words, a weather warning is issued and people are requested to please take account of it and to take steps to ensure that they protect their lives.

The purpose of this Bill is twofold. It amends, as the Minister of State said, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 to make sure that employees are safe during severe weather warnings issued by Met Éireann, not by anybody else. It also seeks to amend the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994 to ensure the protection of the public safety and the safety of rescue service personnel during such a weather warning.

As I read through the Minister of State's remarks, which are written in such opaque language, it refers to safety at the workplace and workplace health and safety, and we want to make sure that whatever progress is being made in that field continues, but this is about a decision whether a person, for non-essential work - not essential work - should be obliged to risk their life going to work.

The Taoiseach asked everyone to stay at home for a 24-hour period during the red status alert. The Taoiseach was right. The State was effectively brought to a standstill. Public transport was disrupted, schools were closed and public sector workers were told to remain at home. Water and electricity supplies for many families were affected. The responsibility of the Government was to act as it did. In advance of Storm Emma there was widespread media coverage of the impending bad weather and we were left in no doubt about the seriousness of the extreme weather that was expected.

Places like Canada deal with weather conditions all the time in the winter which are much worse than what we experienced. Even though there is the danger of climate change and so on, we only get these big storms rarely but when we have that focus, those warnings, the Taoiseach asking everyone to stay at home, the shutdown of public transport and so on, then surely the Government is obliged for those non-essential workers to give them at least the protection that they deserve. It is straightforward in the case of public sector workers. Non-emergency service staff stayed at home. Oireachtas staff stayed at home. Sinn Féin staff stayed at home.

Front-line staff, hospital staff, showed amazing commitment and courage, as did carers and personal assistants. We all know stories of carers who trudged through the snow to help a person and personal assistants did the same. Another issue, with which we cannot deal today, is that some people with disabilities were left isolated for days because there was not the type of transport that could get to them in such a freak weather storm. In the private sector there was great uncertainty as to what people should do. Some people took a day's holiday and stayed at home, some people worked from home and some people either, at the behest of their employers or in the absence of clear guidelines, went to work. The objective of this Bill is to provide clarity and protection for workers and for citizens.

I am sure the Minister of State would agree that no employee should be asked or expected to jeopardise their safety to go to work when there is a clear risk to their health and safety. None of us would do it. We have a responsibility to act to remove this ambiguity. No one should have to worry about going to work if there has been a red weather alert. If it is good enough for public sector workers, for non-essential workers, why is it not good enough for private sector workers? The only reason is that the tab would have to be picked up by the private sector. Because these storms are rare, we do not believe it would put a huge burden on the State to resolve that difficulty. It would also mean that, for the first time, workers in the private sector would be on the same legislative basis as workers in the public sector.

The second part of the Bill, which Teachtaí Munster and Cullinane have addressed, deals with protecting the public and members of the emergency services. There are two Flann O'Brien-type sections in the Minister of State's remarks. One is where he states: "in the case of food distribution preventing workers delivering food in circumstances where it has been determined that it is safe to do so may ... [exacerbate] food shortages or give rise to a loss of perishable foodstuffs and, in extreme circumstances give rise to social unrest". Let us get real about the all of this. For those who drive through breaking high waves, on promenades, swim in the seas or drive into countryside blanketed in snow and so on, they put themselves and others like good samaritans, emergency staff and neighbours at risk. Everybody accepts that behaviour is irresponsible. We simply want to deal with that and to make sure there is a sanction that would put people off that sort of behaviour and, thus, also save those who might have to go to their rescue.

I am disappointed the Government is not going to support this Bill. I hope everyone else does. I have written to all the party leaders. I wrote to all the Louth TDs, given that the request came from within our constituency. We are prepared to work with officials to try to amend or straighten out any genuine difficulties with this Bill.

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