Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

This is a very cynical debate. Some of the contributions from the Government-supporting Deputies are extremely cynical. They are painting themselves now as supporters and defenders of workers' rights under the guise of pushing for an end to mandatory hotel quarantine. If they are serious about supporting workers' rights, they should get the Government to step in now to guarantee jobs and terms and conditions, and to renationalise Aer Lingus to do so. The Government has the power to do that. It does not have to mess around with mandatory hotel quarantine or anything else. Defend the jobs, conditions and incomes of workers in the industry.

This is not the first attack on workers in aviation. They have been on the front line again and again since Covid-19 started. Some companies have taken advantage of the pandemic to try to restructure workers' conditions in the company's favour to have a more flexible workforce and so forth. Again, I did not hear Government Deputies speaking up for those workers.

Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, workers, for example, faced the so-called new ways of working, which was a tearing up of their existing conditions that was rammed through for most groups of workers under massive pressure, which they were effectively forced to accept. The maintenance workers who refused to accept this have had their pay and working time reduced by 40% since October because they stood up to the DAA. I salute those workers for continuing to fight.

I emphasise that I do not agree with lifting mandatory hotel quarantine. To do that now would be to court making the same mistakes that were made in December, with potentially disastrous results. Instead, we should be eliminating the outsourcing that goes with it. We should be placing it under the control and supervision of ordinary working people by running it as part of the public health service with supervision from civil liberties activists. We should not be scrapping it, however. It should, in fact, be extended to Britain. The Government must listen to the warnings about what will happen with the Indian variant and the danger it presents if we do not move now to introduce mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers from Britain.

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