Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly on the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill 2018. This Bill is the result of a number of events that led to the Government finally promising legislation to allow An Garda Síochána to have access to the industrial relations machinery of the State, namely, the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, and the Labour Court. Of course, the need for this legislation was very evident and never more urgent than in November 2016 when the so-called "blue flu" was averted at the last minute. While this Bill is a welcome first step, I agree with my Sinn Féin and Labour Party colleagues that An Garda Síochána, whose members are such an important group of workers in our society, should have full trade union rights.

As always, the work of the Oireachtas Library and Research Service in producing an informative Bill digest is excellent and particular thanks are due to the digest's author, Ms Adele McKenna, from whom I also received a short briefing yesterday. Currently, the conciliation and arbitration scheme is the main industrial relations mechanism for An Garda Síochána. However, according to the aforementioned digest, the scheme remains in place but does not meet very often, if at all. Since the events at the end of 2016, it was agreed that the WRC and the Labour Court would be made available to members of An Garda Síochána on an informal basis until necessary legislation was published and passed. That legislation is, at long last, before us today.

Historically, An Garda Síochána has not been allowed to engage in industrial disputes and to do so would be seen as a breach of discipline under regulation No. 5 of the 2007 Garda Síochána discipline regulations, SI 214/2007. The Industrial Relations Act 1990 and the Garda Síochána Act 2005, about which we had a very lengthy discussion in this House previously, prevent the formation of Garda trade unions and prohibit engagement with umbrella organisations such as ICTU due to possible conflicting demands on the need to police other union protests or the protection of State infrastructure.

In other jurisdictions, such as the UK, New Zealand and Australia, the rights of members of law enforcement bodies to engage in industrial action are restricted. It seems incongruous, at the very least, that the Bill before us would not include full recognition of the rights of gardaí as workers, including the ultimate right, as Deputy O'Reilly so eloquently said, to secure enforcement of the decisions of the Labour Court and the WRC by withdrawing their labour. I do not agree that any worker should be prevented from participating in collective action. In a 2007 paper by Ms Wiebke Warneck about strike rules in the EU 27, the author provides a list of countries, including Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Spain, that restrict the right of their police forces to organise and to pursue industrial action. The security role of all of those police forces is highlighted in the paper. At the same time, this critical group of workers in our society is being denied a right that the rest of us regard as both essential and fundamental.

There are four bodies representing members of An Garda Síochána, comprising the Garda Representative Association, GRA, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, the Association of Garda Superintendents and the Association of Garda Chief Superintendents, AGCS. The GRA is reported to have 10,000 rank and file members but these associations were not invited to take part in the cross-departmental working group on industrial relations structures for An Garda Síochána. They were invited to send in written submissions but it would have been preferable for them to be involved in across-the-table discussions. Preceding the working group, as other Deputies have mentioned, in 2012 the European Confederation of Police, EuroCOP, brought a case against Ireland on behalf of the AGSI to the European Committee of Social Rights, ECSR. The AGSI is a member of EuroCOP and the case was based on the premise that it is a breach of the European Social Charter to deny access to the WRC and the Labour Court. In 2014, the ECSR ruled that Garda associations perform the same duties as trade unions and therefore gardaí do not to join other trade unions. It also ruled that Garda associations should be allowed to join umbrella union organisations under Article 5, that access to pay negotiations was restricted, breaching Article 6.2, and that gardaí should be allowed to strike under Article 6.4.

The ruling was non-binding but in 2016 Mr. John Horgan, who was previously deputy chairman of the Labour Court, led the Haddington Road agreement review of An Garda Síochána. The Horgan review found that the four Garda associations should become official trade unions and agreed with the ECSR that they be allowed to join national umbrella organisations such as ICTU but that strike action should not be allowed. The working group mentioned previously was established in 2017 and its first report goes against the recommendations of the ECSR and the Horgan report. It did, however, recommend that gardaí be allowed to access the WRC and Labour Court. It is the recommendations of the working group that formed the basis for the Bill before us. The second report of this working group on how industrial relations will operate going forward was due to be completed this time last year but is still outstanding. When will that report be published?

We cannot underestimate the incredibly stressful and difficult working life of members of An Garda Síochána. At a recent meeting of the AGSI, topics discussed included levels of depression and stress suffered by members of the force as well as a range of welfare issues. Disturbingly, it was noted that 12 members had died by suicide between August 2017 and March 2018. We know that there have been morale issues within An Garda Síochána. There has been much discussion and coverage of scandals involving An Garda Síochána, including most recently the Charleton report. It must be remembered that many of the pressures on An Garda Síochána, as with other workers, stem from the savage cuts in pay and conditions that were imposed from 2008. We are talking here about a lost decade. When I questioned the Taoiseach recently about crime levels in our society and referred to the pressures on An Garda Síochána, particularly at community policing level, he referred constantly to 2021 and 2022, when the force will have 21,000 members and ancillary support staff. The existing staff have had to try to deal with very serious anti-social and criminal matters day after day, year after year during this horrendous period. I read an article recently by Mr. Stephen Collins in which he argued that the blanket bank guarantee actually worked. We know, however, from the levels of cuts to our public services, from the disaster that is housing and health and from the 400,000 young people who emigrated that it did not work. Austerity did not work here, no more than it worked in Greece and An Garda Síochána and law enforcement were seriously impacted by it.

In terms of rights of members of An Garda Síochána, the most fundamental is full trade union rights and all that this entails. While I support this legislation as a step along that road, we must be prepared to give gardaí their full rights.

Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh rightly raised concerns about work levels at the WRC and the Labour Court. A 10% increase, on top of the current backlog of claims sent to the WRC and the Labour Court, is expected, or perhaps an additional 1,500 claims. The representative bodies, the AGSI and the others, state this is a conservative estimate of what the conciliation service will have to face. The Minister of State mentioned that the legislation would commence following the establishment of internal procedures and that referrals could only be sent to the WRC and the Labour Court once these procedures were dealt with. He might come back and tell the House what we are talking about. What are the additional internal procedures? Perhaps the Department and An Garda Síochána have discussed this issue, but it is something of which the House is not aware.

This short Bill amends sections 3 and 23 of the Industrial Relations Act 1990. The amendments to section 3 add to the definition in section 23 of the 1990 Act of types of worker and will now include members of An Garda Síochána, although it excludes the Garda Commissioner and members of the Garda Reserve. These exclusions are debatable.

Section 4 inserts a sixth Schedule to the 1990 Act. The GRA is not satisfied with the Bill because it does not extend the right to industrial action or classify the GRA as a full trade union.

I welcome the Bill as a step forward. Access was the first step. On behalf of the trade union movement, a far-ranging trade union recognition Bill was introduced in this House almost 20 years ago. I believe profoundly in the right of every worker to trade union representation. At the time we were campaigning for Ryanair to allow trade union recognition. I congratulate the trade union movement on the fact that, at long last, such recognition has been achieved in that company. The Minister of State knows the aviation sector well. Gardaí should have similar rights. That is the bottom line.

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