Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

We are happy to support this Bill, which is a good one. It is a bit nauseating to listen to the Government and Deputy Eugene Murphy jump through hoops to explain their rationale. They must have a special department that writes these speeches to come up with explanations for opposing Bills that are perfectly simple and which obviously should be supported. The root cause was pointed out, namely, the fear of interfering with companies' profits. It is ironic that we are having this debate today because this morning the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach dealt with Deputy Pringle's Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill 2016. The Government's approach to that is to make it effectively toothless. In respect of the causes of the climate crisis, the Government is in favour of not taking the necessary action. At the other end of the line, however, and one of its effects, the increased number of extreme weather events - there will be more of them in Ireland, because in the past 12 months there have been two red weather alerts - it is not willing to touch the basic issue of profit and say that workers' lives and health and those of the public in general must come before the profits of business. It is as simple as that. What is the point of red weather warnings unless they mean something across the economy?

Unfortunately, the approach today is consistent with the approach of the Taoiseach and to Storm Ophelia where very confused signals were sent out to workers. The Taoiseach said it was up to businesses to decide whether to close during dangerous storm conditions which created the situation for hundreds of thousands of workers that they did not know whether they had to go to work. We saw this on social media and heard it from people contacting their public representatives and so on. There were irresponsible employers who expected their workers to turn up. Many workers made dangerous journeys only to be sent home. Public sector workers were rightly told not to show up, but in the same workplaces contracted private companies told their workers that if they did not show up they would have to take annual leave. Some of the companies that put workers at risk during the closure were Ryanair, Dawn Meats and Tesco. It should have been clear that a red weather warning means that nobody goes to work except those in essential services. Businesses should have put their workers' lives above their profits and given them a paid day off.

I was struck by this line in the Minister of State's response: "These amendments would confer a range of disproportionate duties on employers, as well as obligations that go beyond what could be regarded as reasonable arising from work activities and the management of a workplace." The amendment requires simply that an employer, when there is a red weather warning and it is not an essential service, would have to contact its employees and tell them they do not have to come to work because it is not opening that day. The idea of referring to "obligations that go beyond what could be regarded as reasonable" is nonsense. It is extremely reasonable that companies would have to do that. The Government's approach is an excuse not to deal with the issue and it is a real shame. I hope the trade union movement and wider society will put pressure on the Government and Fianna Fáil to say this Bill should pass Second Stage next week and then become law.

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