Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is a very welcome and timely debate, particularly in view of the circumstances in which this country and the world find themselves. I want to thank Deputy Pringle for again proposing this very sound and progressive initiative.

The pandemic, as has been enunciated by a succession of speakers, has revealed some very deep inequalities, and revealed much about the very nature of this country, how this State is organised and who it prioritises. Truths that have been apparent to me all my life, but probably less so to many others in this House, have been revealed in very stark relief. At its core, our society and economy operate on a very structurally unfair basis. Ireland is unequal and the world is unequal. The State's response to the Covid-19 public health crisis and the associated economic crisis has, of course, been unprecedented but it has been unprecedented because it needed to be. The State's response has also been revealing in many ways. Our collective response, as a community, has shown the very best of us. It has demonstrated an extraordinary degree of solidarity, of community and of neighbourliness across the country. However, the pandemic has also revealed, as we know, a public health service that is gravely short of beds, a two-tier labour system and labour market, and a vulnerability across society that was literally brought into stark relief overnight at the end of last March and into early April.

Those of us who are students of history know that pandemics and global crises like that which we are now experiencing have, over the centuries, brought forward radical social and economic change. If anything collectively good is to come out of the death, the trauma and the tragedy of the Covid pandemic, then it ought to be a fairer and more economically and socially just society that has a commitment to decency and justice at its very core. That is why this proposition before us today, brought to us by Deputy Pringle, is particularly timely. It really should generate a broader and more informed – I use that term deliberately - debate about the kind of country we want post-pandemic Ireland to be.

I know what it should not be and I know what it should be. It certainly should not be a country where obscene amounts of wealth are concentrated in the hands of those who inherit their wealth and do nothing of value with it, in my view. It should not be an Ireland where who you are, where you are reared or where you are from dictates where you end up. It should not be an Ireland where people are destined to live insecurely and unsafely because they do not have the resources to buy their own home. It cannot be a case of, "Here is the new Ireland, the same as the old Ireland" and we go with a business-as-usual approach.

The Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, is a foundational document which has shown itself to be capable of progressive amendment when the need and the demand arises. It is an evolving, organic, living thing. It is the property of the people, fundamentally. When it was written and endorsed by the Irish people, this was done as an expression of the values and principles of this State. It was an expression at the very highest level of who we were, who we are, who we wanted to be and how we wanted to be viewed by the world, and the values and the principles we stand for.

Ireland has changed and it will change even more.

We signed up to the convention in 1989 without explicitly including the terms of the charter in Bunreacht na hÉireann. Politically, we managed to pioneer and legislate for some significant changes to the social, economic and cultural life of our country. Those who will oppose amending our Constitution to include the amendment from the Constitutional Convention, as referenced by Deputy Pringle, will do so on the basis that the allocation of resources is a matter for democratically elected parliaments such as this. They are, to an extent, right. That is how matters stand at the moment. The allocation of resources and debates about political policy, etc., and how decisions are made are rightly argued and justified here in this, our national Parliament. What we are talking about here, however, is what I might describe as a floor beneath which no one should be allowed fall, and enshrining that principle in our Constitution. It is about a basic guarantee of rights and minimum standards, importantly, subject to available resources. That last point is important. Only those who fear the demand for the fairer allocation of resources are the only ones to fear from such a move.

That said, we have heard here, particularly in recent years, descriptions of Ireland being something like a disaster zone. Some people serve their own political purposes in saying that. There are, however, many things that this country does very well and there are lots of significant economic, social and cultural changes that my party pioneered and was involved in at the front line over many decades to enable us to make this country much better, much fairer and more progressive. There is much more that we need to do, however, and we all need to be conscious of that.

Emblematic of the way this country has historically dealt with questions relating to economic rights is our failure to properly prioritise the principle of collective bargaining. This country is deeply unequal economically and the most scarring form of inequality is economic. I have absolutely no doubt about that. The best way to allocate the resources won by hardworking people is to ensure that they not only have a right to join a trade union but the right to be represented by that trade union for the purposes of collective bargaining. It is an observable fact that countries which have strong, robust trade union representational systems and collective bargaining systems do best socially and economically. In that context, who should fear the introduction of strong, robust collective bargaining and trade union laws? That is an open question. It is amazing that we still have not grappled with that key principle which has bedevilled us for many years. Our Constitution as it stands - in terms of the interpretation put on many questions before judges over many decades - prioritises the interests of private property rights over the collective common good. That is a bizarre situation and one of the things that Deputy Pringle's Bill seeks to address in the context of introducing constitutional amendment on progressive cultural, social and economic rights. The Labour Party is happy to support that principle and to support Deputy Pringle's initiative.

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