Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will talk for the next two minutes and then we will adjourn. I will undertake to do exactly what the Deputy suggested.

I will correct a number of inaccuracies from the past couple of minutes. I am not trying to change anything that I put into the Bill. When the penalisation provisions were attempted to be amended on Committee Stage, the Government voted against the proposal. I articulated for all of the Members who were present for the Committee Stage debate the reasons the Government was voting against it. It is no different from what I described just moments ago, with the exception that I have had the time and space to go to the WRC and the Labour Court and ask them their opinions on the Committee Stage amendment. That is what I read out a few moments ago. I am not sure at what other point I could have given the House that information other than on Report Stage. The only reason I am trying to amend the Bill by making both of the deletions in amendments Nos. 3 and 4 is to strengthen it and bring it back to where it was. Effectively, what the Labour Court and WRC are telling us is that because we have inserted two standards, nobody has to meet either because if an employee made a complaint on one standard there is the option for an employer to appeal or initiate a judicial review because the employee did not make the case on the basis of the other standard. The likelihood is that one or other of the provisions will be rendered useless. What we all wanted through Second Stage and Committee Stage was to have a penalisation provision and protection for employees to make sure if they took a case to the WRC the burden of proof was equal and that it was the WRC, as is its right in statute, that would adjudicate on the merits of the complaint. We absolutely acknowledge there are no such things as frivolous complaints being made. When employees take cases to the WRC or the Labour Court, they have substantive reasons for doing so.

As I have run out of time and given that my word is not good enough, I will commit to furnishing to the members of the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection, between now and tomorrow evening, the representations and responses I received from the WRC and the Labour Court.

See this speech in context