Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I wish to reiterate the point made by Deputy Gannon, that the actions we are seeking on foot of this motion are exceptionally modest, as part of the New Decade, New Approach agreement in Northern Ireland. We remember that agreement in January very well. I am sure the Minister of State remembers it. It was just before the general election was called and it got the institutions back up and running. The agreement was signed by the previous Government as a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement. The last Government committed to focus on creating good jobs and protecting workers' rights. This motion calls on the Government to demonstrate the same commitment to workers' rights in the Republic as was signed up to in the North.

Yesterday, the Tánaiste said to me in response to a question that there is no crystal ball to show how long the Covid-19 pandemic will continue or its long-term effects. Of course, that is true. However, while we might not be able to see the future we should not allow ourselves to forget the very recent past. We must aim to recover in a way in which we have learned lessons from the past. There are obvious structural weaknesses in the way work has been developing in a precarious way, whereby people cannot make decisions for themselves because they are never sure of their income.

The Covid-19 crisis has had a devastating impact on public health and the wider economy. The ongoing pandemic has amplified and shone a light on the many issues affecting workers in this country. Throughout the pandemic every Member of the House has given praise to workers and especially to low-paid and precarious workers, such as the people who deliver the food to our supermarkets, who stock the shelves and who we meet at the check-outs. People refocused what they saw as being essential. However, it cannot be enough just to acknowledge that and to thank and congratulate people. Those workers cannot live on our platitudes. We owe them a debt of gratitude and we must deliver real and practical solutions to vindicate their rights. That has to be the legacy from this crisis.

When the Covid-19 crisis passes, employers in both the private and public sectors will be judged on how they treated the most vulnerable workers during these unprecedented times. This Dáil has an equal responsibility to ensure that workers' rights and conditions are enshrined in law and have full statutory backing. The latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, statistics show that 23% of the Irish workforce are low paid. That is the third highest in the European Union. Moreover, a 2018 report from the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC, found that 44% of the workforce was in precarious employment. Most of them were at an increased risk of poverty. They have no guarantee of hours or income, no sick pay, no annual leave and no pension entitlements. We saw a report published today on the pension time bomb. I wonder to what extent the precarious nature of employment has been built into that.

This is bad enough in and of itself, but we must consider the knock-on effects it has on workers' lives. They do not have the security to aspire to buying a house, for example. Often they postpone things like forming a family. Even where somebody has a well-paid job in contractual employment, something like a mortgage can be out of reach. It is not just impacting on their weekly wage and conditions but also on their quality of life and the choices they can make. In a country as wealthy as ours, this is unacceptable. Moreover, it is uneconomical. At the end of last year, 108,400 part-time workers were categorised as underemployed. According to EUROSTAT projections the chances of an Irish part-time worker transitioning to full-time employment in 2017 was as low as 3%, the lowest in the EU countries that were surveyed.

This is a huge resource of skills, talents and human potential that we are allowing to be wasted because we remain wedded to an out-of-date, outmoded model of employment that, frankly, belonged to the middle of the last century. It was not fit for purpose before the pandemic and it certainly is not fit for purpose afterwards. Until we take decisive action, and it will not happen by accident, there will continue to be inequality and shameful poverty rates. One in five children lives in poverty. One in six people who are employed lives below the poverty line.

None of that is acceptable, yet the Government has proposed an amendment to the motion that strips out all the practical actions that need to be taken and will make a difference. It is particularly telling that the amendment removes all references to workers' rights and collective bargaining. This is an area in which this country is distinctly lacking. We are the only EU member state in western Europe that does not have binding collective bargaining legislation. It is very troubling to see the Government take this tack especially when we are seeing the erosion of workers' rights. Obviously, we must rebuild differently.

In the last few weeks I have received a number of messages from workers who are finding themselves under pressure to reduce their pay and conditions to facilitate their employers. It is really a David and Goliath fight. We have seen that with the Debenhams workers outside the House today. We see how unprotected they are. We saw it a few weeks ago with CityJet. Essentially, our examinership process is working to the advantage of the parent company in the Cayman Islands at the expense of the employees here. Indeed, we will end up with a shell company here with very little employment. The Instant UpRight workers comprise another group. They are seeing their jobs outsourced to China and Latvia. Even in the shopping malls one sees places that are not open and will not open. Much of what was heretofore direct employment in this country is disappearing.

There needs to be a significant focus on job retention.

The workers in this country deserve far greater ambition. We must strive for our country not just to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic but to recover as a better country than when we went into it. We need to see good-quality jobs in which workers have a voice and a level of autonomy, a guarantee of a decent income, security of tenure and decent working conditions as the bare minimum every citizen in this country should be entitled to expect. This will require a clear roadmap and legislative plan. The task force we are proposing certainly would not be a panacea but would at least move the focus of attention in the right direction. We need wide-ranging structural changes. What we need is a tangible pathway to deliver something better. We do not want to be here in two or three years' time talking about the continued precarious nature of work. Anyone who looks at those who are impacted will find that young people, who are talked about as being the group we need to be most concerned about in the future, are the most likely to be in the most precarious of jobs. According to a recent survey, they take up those jobs because, they say, they do not have any other option.

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