Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

At the end of the week an announcement will be made by NASRA, which is a branch of the PNA, on the future days of action it will be taking and that will include a two-day continuous strike. Without the Government wishing to give itself more grief on the question of the health service, this dispute could be ended simply and without costing anyone a penny, except for the paramedics and ambulance drivers themselves because then they could properly pay their union dues.

The HSE deducted union dues from members of NASRA for seven years. NASRA has between 500 and 600 members out of a total of 1,300 paramedics. Approximately 50% of the membership of the paramedic services and the NAS are members of NASRA and, for seven years, the HSE formally recognised them by deducting their fees and then last year it stopped taking deductions at source from any new members who joined NASRA. The Minister of State knows exactly what I am referring to, being a long in the tooth trade unionist like myself. Then in August it ceased all NASRA deductions. The HSE has provoked and manipulated the situation and it has goaded these workers into a dispute because it is refusing to deal with them. The HSE suspended four of its members in Cork last week who refused to work for a continuous 20 hours because they said it would have been contrary to their health and safety. Those members have since been reinstated.

I put it to the Minister of State as somebody who has fought for trade union rights for as long as he has, that it is not his decision, the Minister's, the HSE's or my decision who represents the paramedics, which union they join and when they walk into a meeting, and who they take with them to act on their behalf as members of a trade union. It is their decision and their right. In a liberal Government that talks a lot about choice and moving forward and all the rest of it, the very least it could do is give these workers a right to be recognised and join the trade union of their choice, not the Minister of State's choice nor mine. All that the Minister and the HSE are doing is causing more havoc in the health service by refusing them that right.

See this speech in context