Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am sharing time with na Teachtaí Patricia Ryan and Martin Browne. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to introduce the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Amendment) Bill 2020. Its purpose is to protect workers in their workplaces. That is its one and only aim. The Bill proposes a straightforward amendment to the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 to make workplace outbreaks of Covid-19 notifiable to the Heath and Safety Authority, HSA. Such proactive notification and surveillance of Covid-19 is key to ensuring the responsible agencies react quickly to prevent the development of clusters of the virus in workplaces, especially meat plants and care homes.

Some people might be shocked to learn that workplace outbreaks of Covid-19 are not currently notifiable to the HSA as an occupational illness due to a lacuna in the 2005 Act. We are outliers in Europe in this regard, with a number of countries, such as Spain, having classified infection with the virus as a workplace injury. I was compelled to publish this legislation in June due to the failure of the Minister then responsible, Deputy Humphreys, to use her powers under the Act to amend the regulations to provide that occurrences of Covid-19 in the workplace would be notifiable to the HSA. That failure has been compounded by the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, who is now responsible for workers' health and safety, and, God help us, workers' rights. He, too, has refused to sign regulations to make Covid-19 a notifiable workplace illness. Despite being the Minister responsible for workers' rights, he is doing the very opposite of what his job title would suggest. The vote last night against paying student nurses and midwives properly is an example of where this Government stands on issues relating to workers' rights.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, has been to the fore in campaigning for this simple change and has written to the relevant Ministers on a number of occasions requesting that it be done. On 24 July, ICTU representatives met with the Tánaiste to discuss the issue of notifiable illnesses and diseases being reportable to the HSA. However, this resulted in no change to the law and no additional protections for workers. At the stroke of a pen, the Tánaiste could make workplace outbreaks of Covid-19 notifiable to the HSA. Unfortunately, he has refused to do so.

This is the latest of many failures by the Government in a short period of time when it comes to workers' rights. The Debenhams situation is another example. The situation of those workers needs a high-level intervention and it needs to be resolved. I welcome the ongoing talks but, in truth, the situation should not have gone on for as long as it did. The workers were out picketing in the freezing cold, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Some of them were women of a certain age who should not have had to be out all night fighting for the basics.

As so many people have said, Debenhams could be just the tip of the iceberg. During Questions on Promised Legislation earlier today, the situation facing Topman and Topshop workers was raised by my colleague, an Teachta Paul Donnelly. In response to the possibility of up to 900 workers losing their jobs with the closure of stores owned by the parent company, the Tánaiste shrugged his shoulders and just said that retail is changing. The State must offer its full support to those workers to lay down the law to the liquidators and the company. It has been announced that the shops intend to continue trading through Christmas under the provisional liquidators in an effort to maximise the value of the stock. However, if the jobs cannot be saved, it is imperative that the money secured from the sale of the stock is ring-fenced for a decent redundancy package for workers in Topman, Topshop, Shaws, Wallis and all the other stores under threat. We have already had the La Senza, Paris Bakery and Clerys cases, which, although not exactly the same, were similar to what is happening with Topshop. In each case, it was said that we had better not let it happen again. We have an opportunity now to ensure we do not have another Debenhams.

I will return now to the Bill. We have only to look at the rise in the rates of infection among healthcare workers and meat and food-processing workers the last time we eased restrictions to know that the failure to put the required protections in place will place workers at risk. There is a lot of talk at this time about remote working. That is an extremely important issue and very valuable conversations are being had about it. This Bill is intended to protect workers who simply cannot work from home and must go into their workplace. The workers who need protection are those in meat factories, food-processing plants, food supply chain operations, nursing homes, hospitals, day centres, shops and building sites. They include gardaí, prison officers, Army personnel and many more. They are ordinary working people and they have been put in danger because of the failure to legislate for what is set out in this Bill. At the time of publishing it in June, I stated that given the evidence of the incidence of Covid-19 in workplaces such as meat plants and health facilities during the lockdown period, this change absolutely must be made and, if it was not, workers would be put in danger. It was with great regret that we saw that warning become a reality in countless workplaces when the economy reopened a few months later.

As I said at the outset, this Bill has only one aim, namely, to protect workers in all workplaces, including meat plants, care homes, building sites and office blocks in the IFSC. It could have been done by statutory instrument but the Government refused to do so. That is why I have had to pursue the legislation. I hope Deputies from all parties and none will stand up for workers' rights and ensure their health and well-being is protected at work by supporting this Bill.

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