Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

What we want to try to achieve in bringing forward this Bill is the end of exploitation, particularly the exploitation of children, where we know it is happening and where there is strong evidence of its existence, and to put on companies or corporate entities a responsibility to ensure their supply chains are such that they are procured or attained ethically. This is why the legislation is timely. We are trying as an Opposition party to promulgate the legislation and put pressure on the Government to meet its obligations in respect of the need to ensure, where there is evidence of the exploitation of workers along the supply chain, that it is seen not only as a moral issue but also as an economic issue.

I will quote from correspondence to The Guardianon 26 December 2022 from Simon Steyne, a former senior adviser on fundamental rights at work at the International Labour Organization. He wrote:

In 1998, the declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work of the International Labour Organization clarified the obligations binding on its 187 member states to protect, respect and realise the rights to freedom from forced labour, child labour and discrimination at work and, above all, the rights to organise and bargain collectively, and their essential purpose: "to enable those concerned ... to claim a fair share of the wealth they have helped to generate".

It is interesting to note the addition of occupational safety and health, which has also become a category in these fundamental rights.

What we have witnessed in recent decades is global brands transferring their production to low-cost economies in countries that are not democratic, although some of them are, and which are do not have a suite of workers' rights. As we know, this has allowed massive exploitation to take place. It has also created these wonderful corporate social responsibility and social auditing industries that allow people to substitute or swap out proper rights for workers.

In this legislation, we want to embed and enshrine within law the need to ensure there is a proper audit of supply chain change that prevents labour exploitation and trafficking from taking place. The point could be made, and this point is also made by Mr. Steyne in his article, that had businesses not wasted decades and billions of dollars constructing corporate social responsibility facades and had they invested in a suite of workers' rights to ensure against exploitation, proper trade union organising and proper governance, then there possibly would not be the need for this type of legislation now. It is a good legislation. I am proud to stand over it and am glad that the Government is not opposing it.

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