Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On the face of it, introducing a licensing system for those working in construction and quarrying, areas which can be dangerous and where lives can be lost, seems reasonable, as does streamlining the process and introducing a licensing authority. Given the shocking figures the HSA has produced on fatal and non-fatal accidents over the years, there seems to be merit in bringing in measures and doing everything we can to improve safety in quarrying and construction. The figure of 1,616 fatal work-related accidents between 1989 and 2016 is pretty shocking. Although the figures seem to be on a downward trajectory over recent years, any death in construction or quarrying is unacceptable. All of that seems reasonable although precisely how this authority is going to work seems a little bit unclear from the legislation. It seems quite a bit will be pushed down the line and dealt with through ministerial order and secondary legislation. However, on the face of it, the Bill seems reasonable.

I will mention one issue I know of from my experience of working with construction workers protesting against bogus self-employment, that is, the phenomenon of cowboy contractors operating a crew of workers whom other tradespeople on the site would report as being clearly unqualified to do the jobs they are doing. Bogus self-employment facilitates that because it is not the main contractor who is directly responsible for the people working on the site, but a subcontractor who will say that all of his or her people are qualified, although there is no way of ensuring that is the case.

Tradespeople reported to me that often tradespeople who were blacklisted from sites because they were union activists could not get on sites while subcontractors had people working who were clearly not qualified to do the job they were doing and were doing substandard work. Indeed, I recall bricklayers, for example, pointing to the footings that were being done on council houses that were being built in my area. I think they are called footings, not that I am an expert in construction.

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