Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The judgment at least speaks to the overall context of the Defence Forces and the rights of their personnel as workers. The judgment of the European Committee of Social Rights earlier this year upheld the entitlement of the Defence Forces to better collective bargaining and negotiation rights. We have been out of line with our European partner nations on workers' rights in the Defence Forces and the Garda, which experiences similar exclusions. This has gone on too long now. It is long overdue for a suite of legislative changes to be brought to the House to bring us into the 21st century in this regard. There is no excuse anymore for Ireland to lag behind in this area and no excuse for our Defence Forces to remain outside the industrial relations architecture and legislation of the State. The Minister of State needs to be proactive rather than wait for the courts to drive him to do the right thing by the Defence Forces.

I am worried by one comment he made. He said that officials were engaged with the representative bodies on this matter but the matter may be constrained if litigation is pursued. Will the Minister of State flesh out what he means by that? I am particularly concerned by that. We need to take the initiative, deal with the matter on a sound basis and put the legislation in place. Let us not be talking about this in six months or a year and saying we are constrained by litigation that is under way.

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