Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the interaction with the Tánaiste.

I have talked to trade union officials who have sat down with managers in these companies across the country, manufacturers who have told them that this will be the consequence but nobody has told them how that consequence is to be adverted. Asking people to register, inviting people to seminars and telling people there is information online is all well and good but it is not the same as having the real knowledge of every enterprise and the impact this will have. It is insufficient to expect companies to come to Government in a passive way. The Government needs to reach out actively and know about this on an enterprise by enterprise basis. We need fine-grained information so that we can build robust, bespoke solutions for the jobs that are under threat already and that will be vastly more under threat in the event of a no-deal Brexit. That is simply a reality. If we had that information, we would be better prepared. We would know what we need to deploy and how we need to deploy it.

The Taoiseach has been unforthcoming about the kinds of supports that will be made available. Yesterday, in his answers to question we put in the House, he talked about viable businesses being eligible for support. That is the phrase he used, but he indicated the nature of that support would be either loans to businesses or funding to support businesses to restructure. What does he mean by restructuring in that context? Does he mean reducing the size of workforces? If that is it, that is not an acceptable approach. As for debt and loans, many businesses in trouble cannot take on new debt, which would be attached to business owners on a personal basis in many instances.

We have a different approach to how we should support jobs during this difficult period. First and foremost, we need detailed information and real management information enterprise by enterprise. Second, we need to be clear on our goal, which must be to preserve as many jobs as possible through the inevitable difficulties that will arise in a no-deal Brexit. Third, we need to prepare direct financial supports to businesses that will need to keep their staff in employment. There are EU rules to be respected. I understand that but, equally, there are European precedents about emergency situations. The Tánaiste has repeatedly told us that the EU is in negotiations about these matters. We need to know what exactly will be agreed in regard to state aid rules, what exactly is the quantum of money that will be available and how will it be deployed.

It was wrong of the Taoiseach to talk about some businesses being viable and others not being so. There will be businesses that will be in trouble for as long as the UK remains outside the Single Market. That is an inescapable fact but that is not a fair measure of their viability or success because we can hope that we will have a new deal ultimately with the United Kingdom in coming months or, if necessary, in coming years. It is highly unlikely the UK will trade with the EU only on the basis of World Trade Organization terms for an extended period. I do not believe that it will sustain that for months, as the economic consequences for it would be very stark. We must assume, in any event, the UK - I hope rationality will ultimately be at play there - will return to the table for some kind of trade deal with the EU. It has to: it is a trading nation like ourselves and it needs to deal on some rational basis with the biggest trading bloc in the world. The Government should therefore be preparing to support jobs during what I would describe as a limited period of difficulty when the UK is outside the Single Market and not yet in a new negotiated trade agreement, assuming that the UK does crash out of the EU as Prime Minister Johnson has threatened again and again. There will be a time limit and a financial cap on the potential cost of the supports I am suggesting.

The Taoiseach said something yesterday with which I agreed, namely, that if we need to borrow money, it would be much better to borrow that money to sustain people in jobs than to pay for people on social welfare. However, there is a still a lot of detail to be clarified about the mechanisms we need to deploy to preserve jobs in this period of crisis. The Taoiseach is far from echoing Mario Draghi's very comforting and famous phrase: "we will do whatever it takes". The Tánaiste will remember our time in government when the advent of Mario Draghi was like a breath of fresh air because he was there to sustain our currency and, ultimately, ourselves. We need to be as unambiguous as Mario Draghi was. We should do whatever it takes to preserve jobs and to avoid a nightmare repeat of the job losses that followed the most recent economic collapse here.

Brexit will affect businesses in a number of different ways, each of which will require a different type of support. Most obviously, we export a huge amount of food to Britain, which may become subject to tariffs or even quotas: we do not know. Exports to Britain are also vulnerable to the UK opening up its markets to other non-EU sources such as cheaper meat from South America or elsewhere. The fall in the value of sterling and the risk of currency fluctuations is yet another concern. The tourism and hospitality sectors are obviously affected by the loss of British tourists. That may well become a real issue, particularly if sterling depreciates significantly. Some of our other overseas visitors also transit through Britain to avail of connecting flights.

Some businesses will be more badly affected by the potential for tariffs on imports from Britain. That will not only add to the price of well known brands on the supermarket shelves but many Irish manufacturers are part of international supply chains. They rely on British components as part of goods they process and finish in Ireland, either for domestic sale or onward export from Ireland.

Brexit will not only affect our direct exports to the UK. It will affect the wider economy in any number of other ways. The nature of supports businesses will need will vary accordingly. For example, one possibility would be a short-time working scheme, which we would negotiate with employers and trade unions to reduce hours across particular vulnerable workforces without making anybody redundant. The State's role would be to provide a payment to bridge the gap between the employer's short-time wages and the people's regular take home pay. That would work for some businesses. It was a model employed in Germany. We did not have the capacity to do it here but we should prepare for that now. Other businesses may need more specific support such as language support to help them access markets in Europe other than the ones they reply upon in the UK, or a scheme to lower the risk from currency fluctuations.

Labour is clear. The Government must do whatever it takes to preserve jobs. There are many regions of Ireland that still have not recovered from the economic collapse. That is quite obvious in some sectors of our economy, namely, the beef sector which is most in focus now and also our sheep sector. Rural areas and small towns are more vulnerable to Brexit related job losses than our cities, a point that was already made by previous speakers. That is why we need to reassure people that as a Parliament and a Government we will do what we can to keep people at work and to avoid any return to the dark days of mass unemployment from which we have just escaped in recent years.

I want to say more about the core issue of jobs because it is something that needs to be said. Contrary to some of the commentary coming from Government and echoed in some elements of the media, we have not reached full employment in this economy. The Irish market is highly precarious. Not everyone who wants a job in Ireland can get a job and not everyone who gets a job can afford to live because the salary scales are so low. Unemployment is over 6% in some regions and over 8% in my own region of the south east.

Over 100,000 people are working part-time and would like full-time hours. We also have a significantly lower employment rate than countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands. In particular, there is still a large gap between male and female employment rates, exacerbated by the high cost of childcare in Ireland because parenting duties so often traditionally have fallen on mothers.

Moreover, even in regions where unemployment is lower, not all jobs are good enough to justify any claim of full employment. No fewer than 23% of all workers are designated as "low paid" by the OECD. This is the third highest incidence of low pay in the European Union, and the highest rate of low pay in developed western Europe.

This is the state of our labour market in advance of Brexit. The economy has recovered somewhat from the devastating 2008 collapse, unemployment is no longer at extreme levels but we have not yet arrived at the point where there are sufficient decent jobs for everybody in the State who wishes to work. Brexit risks making the situation much worse. That is why it is so important that the Government gets a better handle on this jobs issue, in a detailed way and, I hope, guided by the way I have set out. The extent of low pay and precariousness in the labour market — regardless of Brexit — is why we need to have a renewed national wages policy and an employment policy. Regardless of Brexit, working people need a pay rise and people in precarious jobs - especially young people — need greater job security. If a hard Brexit occurs in six weeks' time, we must ensure that issue is not used as an excuse to delay making the much-needed improvements to workers' rights, pay and conditions as I fear the Government might well do.

We all hope that the worst will not happen but we need to prepare for it now. The signals coming from Westminster are constantly changing. I will be attending the British Labour Party conference this weekend and I hope to have detailed talks with the key players in that party. They will play their role, but we must do our bit to ensure that whatever outcome emerges from London - the ball, as the Tánaiste has rightly said, is in London's court - we are prepared here.

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