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

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute on the Bill. I commend the work of Fáilte Ireland, but I want to say to the Members from rural Ireland, some of whom spoke before me, that I am not certain of the benefit of a ramble around their own county, listing bed and breakfast accommodation, because I do not know how many international tourists tune in here to get their travel advice. I am sure if they did, it would be beneficial to them but perhaps their time could be better utilised, although that is a matter for themselves.

I commend the work of Fáilte Ireland on the establishment of the employer excellence programme, which seeks to support businesses to drive great employee engagement and continuously build the appeal of their workplace is a welcome one. It is clear there are serious issues within the sector in attracting and retaining staff. This attempt to help the sector reposition itself as an appealing and rewarding place to work, in the highly competitive labour market is welcome. It reminds me of a campaign run by my former employer, SIPTU, and other unions - the Fair Hotels campaign.

One of the things we noticed at the time was that people want to stay, engage, eat, drink and socialise in places where workers are treated with decency and respect. It is not always about the bottom line for the consumer, although very often it is. The two should not be put in competition with each other; decent wages should not compete with affordable experiences.

Many in the sector have scoffed at the employer excellence plan. They are the ones who want to use the employment permit system to hire from outside Ireland, the EU, the EEA, Britain and Switzerland. If workers cannot be attracted from such a massive pool, then to my mind the problem has to be pay and conditions in the sector. Sinn Féin totally opposes any moves to open up the possibility of an exploitative employment model in the tourism and hospitality industry which is neither an ethical nor sustainable solution for the sector. We know from countless pieces of academic research and data from the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, that there are issues in regard to the treatment of workers in the sector.

Dr. Deirdre Curran of NUIG recently appeared before Oireachtas committees to relay the findings of her research, which found that 70% of the workers she surveyed did not get a Sunday premium, 63% witnessed or experienced bullying, 55% witnessed or experienced harassment, 43% did not have a proper contract of employment, 77% experienced verbal abuse sometimes or often, and 64% experienced psychological abuse and 52% did not get their entitlement to rest breaks. This is backed up by data from the WRC, which told us in its 2020 report that 24% of hotels, 27% of beverage service activities and 32% of food service activities were found to be in breach of employment rights. Almost €500,000 of unpaid wages was recovered for these categories. Therefore, while we welcome the employer excellence programme, the reality is, and the facts bear this out, that what is really needed is trade union recognition, collective bargaining and rights for trade unions to organise.

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