Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

Before I get into the substance of the issue, I add our support to the matter that was just under discussion. My colleague, Deputy David Cullinane, and I both co-signed that Topical Issue to lend our support to it because it is an issue that affects the whole south east. I know Deputies from Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny are supportive of that and working in unison to get the Government to do the right thing by the N24.

To the substance of the issue that Deputy Cullinane and I are raising, the working time arrangement that is now applied to the Coast Guard helicopter crews is unsafe, unlawful and utterly unsustainable. We have a situation where full 24-hour duties, during which crews must be in immediate readiness and are confined to strict response times on site, are being logged as only 16.5 hours of work. It would be bad enough if that was just a misunderstanding by the operator but it is a deliberate reclassification of active duty as standby.

European working time law and the Irish regulations that give effect to it are absolutely clear. There should be no ambiguity about this. When a worker is under the employer's control and required to maintain readiness for immediate deployment, that is working time. Across Europe, the courts have repeatedly affirmed that where a worker's freedom is severely restricted in terms of keeping them on site and being in a state of readiness, as a search and rescue crew's freedom clearly is, that time must be counted in full.

In Waterford, this is not an abstract issue. It is something that is a matter of life and death. We already saw a preceding Minister, former Deputy Eamon Ryan, try to cut Waterford's search and rescue base out of the tender documents for the new contract. A popular campaign locally on the ground in Waterford and across the south east forced a U-turn on that. We do not want to see a diminution of safety standards. We do not want to see workers' rights under attack in this way. We certainly do not want to see a service that is not fit for purpose and where crew safety and the safety of those they serve is jeopardised.

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