Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

During debates of this kind, we often find ourselves strongly advocating for a Bill and strongly opposing the position of the Government. As the previous speaker indicated, however, thankfully we are in a position whereby the Bill tabled by Deputy O'Reilly is not being opposed by the Government and, therefore, can advance to the next stage when, hopefully, it can be improved, amended or whatever on Committee Stage.

I am slightly confused, notwithstanding the goodwill of the Minister of State and the Government, as to the issues he has with the Bill. In his contribution, he stated that, effectively, he does not want the message to get out to the wider public that such reporting mechanisms do not exist and that, on one level, there is not really a need for the Bill. Then, however, he details reasons there are problems with the Bill because what it tries to achieve is not workable, which undermines his statement that it is already being done. There is also the question of privacy issues.

I am interested in the issue and I am interested in the reasons given by the Minister of State. I often believe there can be validity to Government statements on these issues, even though at first glance they may not appear to have validity. This is the kind of thing that would be debated over and back on Committee Stage. To be fair to the proposer of the Bill, this has been kicking around since June. I know a reference has been made to the specific nature of Covid-19 and perhaps it should be broader to have longer lasting standing on the Statute Book. At the same time, I often think Bills which come before this House which are short, sharp, to the point, and want to achieve a specific outcome have a better chance of success. On that basis, I am glad the Government is not opposing the Bill.

Effectively, what the Bill is trying to do, as Deputy O'Reilly has outlined on a number of occasions, is to protect workers. As Deputy Lawless said, we do not always need to have an argument over these issues or to try to put people in different trenches. However, on the entire issue of the pandemic and the post-Covid economy that we will rebuild, we come at this from the position of the worker who is vulnerable. In that regard, as the Minister of State knows, we have been proposing legislation on sick pay, and he has previously made the point that it is hoped legislation will come forward in March. At the same time, when the Labour Party proposed the sick pay Bill, the suggestion was that within 12 months, we would get some movement on that and, therefore, in the teeth of a pandemic, when so many other elements have been seen to move quickly, and when we are pretty much an outlier among EU and OECD countries by not having statutory sick pay for workers, that there would be that lag and lack of immediacy around the provision of sick pay is disappointing. The Minister of State will be aware of the Labour Party legislation that we proposed just last month on the right to switch off for people working from home. While working from home has benefits for home life and for the environment, when we move from having 200,000 people working from home to 800,000 in less than a year, we need to have regulation and protections for those workers, so they do not feel as if they are not just working from home but living in an office.

I come from a professional background of teaching in a disadvantaged school, where it was often my responsibility to inform the wider society of the reality of what it is like to live and try to learn in an overcrowded space, and to do homework on the stairs, on the floor or on the edge of a bed. Now, workers are being expected by employers to do the very same thing without any oversight, without added protections and without any investment into that workspace by employers.

As Deputy O'Reilly said, an outbreak of Covid- 19 in the workplace environment, outside of the working from home space, is the point of the Bill and, therefore, there is validity in what she is trying to say. Between what the Minister of State has contributed, what the Bill is trying to achieve and what we are all trying to achieve in protecting workers, we can probably find some common ground on Committee Stage.

We certainly cannot return to where we were. I want to make a point, as I promised I would do every time I get the opportunity to engage on issues of employment rights, workers’ rights, the enterprise agenda, the business agenda or any economic debate in this House, on the number of workers in the economy prior to the pandemic who were very vulnerable, in insecure work and on poor pay. The rights of those workers to have their union representation recognised and to have employers engage with that union representation is weak in this country, which is the reason we have a disproportionate number of workers in insecure work and on poor pay.

The Minister of State will be sick of me saying that the beauty of coming from a teaching background is that I have learned to say things over and over again and, hopefully, at some stage, it might work its way in between the ears of the students. In this regard, she is my student while I have the floor. If we had 23% of workers in the pre-Covid economy on low pay, that is not something we can stand over, and he will agree with that. It is something we have to work to amend and to ensure we do not return to. If 40% of workers under 30 are in insecure work, that is something we cannot stand over either. We cannot just assume that what we want to achieve is to get back to where we were. With the talk of the vaccine, the talk of Christmas and the talk of normality, there is a sense that if we just go back to where we were, everything will be fine. We had this in the previous crisis ten years ago, when we said we would never go through a housing crash or a boom and bust cycle again, and we would never let housing crack our people. Sure enough, ten years later, it is housing which is hurting our people, families and communities.

In this sense, from the Labour Party perspective, I want to work with the Minister of State and the Government to ensure we do not return to where we were, with such a low pay economy and with young workers in such insecure work, and then having to introduce legislation, which we would have assumed was already on the Statute Book, to deal with the issues of remote working, working from home and sick pay.

With that, I appreciate what Deputy Lawless said about it being worthy for us to ensure people watching debates like this do not have to pick a side, pick a team or fly a flag, and that they are able to believe that politicians can be of equal mind in trying to protect workers and to achieve something out of this. On that basis, the fact the Minister of State is not opposing the Bill and is willing to work with Deputy O'Reilly on Committee Stage speaks well of tonight's debate. We will see what happens on Committee Stage and we will also see what happens when it comes to the Government's consideration of sick pay and the right to switch off with regard to remote working.

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