Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

No one could argue with the need for increased safety in construction and related trades. Next to farming, this sector has consistently recorded the highest levels of injuries and deaths. According to the Health and Safety Authority's figures for last year, seven workers lost their lives in construction. Between 2008 and 2019, 107 fatal incidents took place in the construction sector. Between 1989 and 2016, a total of 1,616 fatal work-related accidents were reported to the Health and Safety Authority, HSA. Over a quarter of those people were involved in construction businesses or other businesses engaged in construction activity.

One of the lessons the pandemic had for us all was that this State's system of regulation and safety enforcement for workplaces was wholly inadequate. The HSA proved itself to be abysmal in enforcing Covid regulations and safeguarding workers, as we saw in meat plants and elsewhere. This State does not generally like regulating. It especially does not like regulating sectors like construction. Witness the defective apartment scandals or the pyrite or mica scandals. All represent failures on behalf of the State to enforce regulations and standards.

This Bill fits in with many efforts at regulation under a regulation regime that largely fails to regulate the problems in a sector. The question for us is whether this Bill addresses the safety issues in construction and quarrying. Forcing workers to have a licence will not, in itself, stop fatalities and injuries on building sites. What we need is a system of real oversight over standards and safety on sites. We need a HSA that actually enforces the safety regulations we do have.

The question again is whether this system of licensing for the various trades will, in itself, address the chronic safety issues affecting workers. The Bill seems to suggest that the issue is just with workers themselves rather than with their working environments or the pressures the industry puts on them to make profits and cut corners. The closest parallel to this system is the certificate of professional competency, CPC, courses that bus drivers, truck drivers and taxi drivers must undertake. In this case, the system is overseen by the Road Safety Authority and sees a plethora of private tutors giving designated courses on specific themes. Every five years, a new licence is issued to those drivers, without which they cannot work. Has the certificate of professional competency in driving resulted in a big improvement in road safety or standards? Most bus drivers, truck drivers and taxi drivers will say "No" and that it is largely a box-ticking exercise that gives the appearance of regulation while doing nothing to address the actual issues faced by workers that lead to accidents and injuries such as road conditions, long shifts, poor working conditions and so on. It is a regulation of sorts which largely leaves companies free to continue as before while placing the onus for safety on the drivers and their behaviour. It is extremely doubtful that this entire system has any effect, good or bad, on safety and I fear that is also true of this Bill.

I will take a minute to talk about why we sometimes regulate in all of the wrong areas. It is good that we are introducing this measure but simultaneously we need to introduce more regulation on the rights of workers at work. Late last year, four workers were sacked from Murphy International. Unite the Union believes they were unfairly singled out and victimised. One of them was a shop steward. As we know, Murphy International is part of a giant group of Murphy companies operating throughout Ireland, the UK and Canada. Last year, this group generated €1.47 billion in revenue. That is an enormous sum of money. That revenue was not generated by the group itself but by its committed workforce, including the four Unite members who were dismissed. Unite views an attack on any member as an attack on all 1.4 million members of the union and will do everything in its power and use every resource, including legal and public-facing campaigns, to ensure those members are reinstated. They are loyal members of staff with a combined 50 years of service. It is appalling that they were left to face Christmas, the winter and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis without an income. As we face into the worst economic and cost-of-living crisis, we see the financial clout of Murphy International. This is completely unacceptable when it leaves real workers facing a very tough future. I therefore argue that this regulation of workers' training should be combined with regulation of the behaviour of companies and regulations on workers' rights.

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