Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputies Cullinane and McGuinness for their work on this motion. I pay tribute to the search and rescue crews in our Coast Guard around the country. They do genuinely heroic work and we all owe them a debt of gratitude. It is extremely disappointing that this motion is even necessary and that the Government has put down an amendment to wash its hands of the issue, because it reflects the lack of respect that these vital workers have been shown in recent months.

I have been dealing with the issue on behalf of a constituent who is a winch crewman paramedic on a rescue helicopter. I wrote to the Minister of State on the matter in August but my office does not appear to have received a response. I did, however, receive a response from the IAA to queries I made. There were a few notable matters in its response. The authority acknowledges that CHC allowed for crew members to be on standby from their own home, whereas Bristow Ireland, the new operator, does not. Why the change and why has the IAA allowed it? Was CHC in the wrong? If it was in the wrong in allowing crew members to be on standby from home and that somehow undermined their work or response time, why did the IAA allow that practice to carry on for the duration of CHC’s contract?

The IAA said in its response that the aeronautical notice, which sets out the flight-time limitations and rest requirements, has not really changed since 2017 and that both operators would be under the same requirements. This appears to be very much a choice being made by the new operator and endorsed by the IAA. I would argue that this very much worsens working conditions for our crucial Coast Guard and search and rescue crew members.

There is also the factoring issue, which I think is the main gripe that the search and rescue workers have with the new arrangement, and rightly so. It is a very simple question. If workers are required to be available on-site or in a nearby hotel, alert and fully deployable for 24 hours straight, then why, on paper, are we pretending they are only working for 16.5 hours? This factoring arrangement, used to reduce recorded duty time, might be common in certain standby contexts, but that is the nub of the issue. Speaking as a former employment lawyer, as far as I am concerned, these crews are not in a standby context. They are not sleeping at home with a pager or whatever. They are not on a rota where half their time is guaranteed rest. They are, for their duty period, under this new contract, on base, ready to take off at a few minutes’ notice, day or night, in conditions that are often unpredictable, demanding or dangerous.

I note as well that in response to parliamentary questions from me and others, the Minister recognises that the new contract obliged crew members who are on duty to remain at the base for the duration of that 24-hour period. Being on duty and being on standby are very different things, but this factoring arrangement treats a part of that duty as being on standby. Factoring down crew members hours is not a technical quirk. In effect, it is an erasure of labour, and no worker’s labour should be reclassified in any way that diminishes his or her rights or, particularly in this case, his or her safety.

Statutory Instrument 507/2006, which gives effect to the European Council Directive 2000/79, states:

“working time’ means any period during which a crew member is working, at the employer's disposal and carrying out the activity or duties of his or her work, including on-call duty performed by a crew member where he or she is required to be physically present at his or her place of work.

Basically, it is saying that working time is working time. It does not mean some of the working time. It does not mean the hours that are convenient are to count. It means the actual hours a worker is required to be available for work in a manner that restricts his or her rest and obliges him or her to be ready to perform his or her duties. In this case, that is 24 full hours. Importantly, the regulation upholds the principle that it operates without prejudice to more favourable standards established under other laws or agreements, and it explicitly prohibits the dilution of these protections through less favourable or alternative arrangements. I fail to see how requiring workers to remain on-site for the duration of their so-called standby period and, in effect, reducing their pay for that pleasure amounts to a more favourable standard. That is what this factoring arrangement is all about. It is about circumventing the annual limit of 2,000 working hours. The fewer hours counted as work, the more work the operator can make a crew do before reaching that threshold. Essentially, therefore, fewer crew members are hired and those who are hired are being paid less per hour.

We can also look to recent rulings in the European Court of Justice, which provide clear guidance on the interpretation of working time in the context of standby duties. Cases brought by the union of doctors in public health services in Valencia and by a Mr. Jaeger against the city of Kiel established that on-site standby time, including time spent sleeping, must be fully regarded as working time when physical presence at the workplace is required. That is pretty clear. One brought by a Mr. Matzak, a retained firefighter in Belgium, determined that a firefighter’s standby time at home counted as working time due to significant restrictions, including the requirement to respond within eight minutes. D.J. v. Radiotelevizija Slovenija clarified that standby time may constitute working time even when the worker is not required to stay in a specific location, if the obligations imposed significantly limit the worker’s ability to use that time freely.

In essence, I have serious questions and concerns about whether this factoring arrangement is in compliance with both national and EU regulations and case law. It appears to me that it is not.

The practical effect of the arrangement is that a 24-hour duty with no night call-out is calculated as 17 hours of work. However, these crews are under significant operational constraints and are clearly at the disposal of their employer throughout the entire duty period, including the overnight hours. According to our own regulations, this time should be fully recognised as working time, not to mention the ECJ rulings that I have just outlined.

The motion also touches on the issue of fatigue, rest requirements and the safety of crew members on search and rescue teams. Aviation safety, maritime safety and emergency-response safety are often framed in terms of equipment standards, training requirements, regulatory oversight and so on. All of these matter. However, the absolute foundation when we are talking about search and rescue teams is the well-being of the crew members; how well rested and supported they are, how much we value their time and how much we take their fatigue seriously. Search and rescue crews work in extremely demanding conditions both physically and mentally. They wake from an interrupted sleep to launch into high-risk operations, often where life-or-death decisions are made by them. They work in darkness, storms and emergencies, in moments where one wrong judgment can have devastating consequences.

To suggest that the time spent over a 24-hour shift at a base or a nearby hotel or wherever does not count as work or contribute towards a crew member’s fatigue is a nonsense. Search and rescue crews do not arrive at a base expecting a quiet night. Emergencies do not arrive on schedule. The crews prepare themselves mentally for the possibility that at any moment they could be called to respond. Indeed, they could be asleep at 2 a.m. and in the air 20 minutes later. They might complete one operation, return to the base and be back out again in a matter of minutes. Under those circumstances, it is simply not credible to suggest that a portion of their time spent at the base constitutes proper rest. They have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, and that is mentally taxing if nothing else. It is only rest if they can actually fully disengage from their work, which they clearly cannot.

Ultimately, when we undercount hours worked, we underestimate fatigue. When fatigue is underestimated, safety systems begin to erode. We cannot allow that to happen in any aviation operation and it is particularly unacceptable in search and rescue where the stakes could not be higher. If we undermine safety, we fail not only the crews but every person who may one day rely on them. This is not an abstract concern. International research in aviation and emergency response operations has repeatedly shown that fatigue is one of the most significant underlying contributors to operational risk. Regulators the world over have spent decades designing frameworks to measure, manage and mitigate fatigue. Those frameworks begin with accurate recording of working time. If we start from inaccurate data - if the system records 16.5 hours where the reality is 24 hours - then every subsequent fatigue-management measure is compromised.

I would like to briefly touch on the wider context of worker’s rights in Ireland. I understand that some winch operators, along with their union, Fórsa, may be taking a case to the Workplace Relations Commission on this issue. If that is the case, I place my support for them on record.

There are too many workers in our economy who do not have the safeguard of a union to fight their corner because employers in Ireland are not obliged to recognise or engage with them. That should have changed a long time ago but it definitely should have changed this time last year, at the deadline to transpose the EU’s directive on adequate minimum wages, which explicitly states that the best way to improve wages and working conditions is through collective bargaining. We, of course, have still not transposed that directive.

It is also three years since the Government’s own Labour Employer Economic Forum published its report on collective bargaining, but we still have not seen an implementation plan for its recommendations. The fact that the Department of enterprise just this summer put out a public consultation on how to best promote collective bargaining is, quite frankly, laughable. We know the answer. It is by recognising trade unions and ensuring that employers engage with them.

I unfortunately have little faith that this Government will do that. It has shown time and again whose side it is on. This Government has enabled VAT cuts for big businesses while postponing the introduction of a living wage and has delayed the increase in statutory sick days. We have even seen a disregard for workers who are unionised, our school secretaries and caretakers, after the Department of public expenditure pulled out of talks on pension parity.

Workers across our economy and our public services are facing issues similar to those faced by our search and rescue crews, including long hours, insufficient rest and blurred boundaries between duty and downtime. Whether in healthcare, transport, emergency services, hospitality, you name it, workers continue to feel the stress of under-resourced systems and an undervaluing of their labour. The situation that has arisen with our search and rescue crews and their treatment under this new arrangement is a particularly stark example but it highlights a broader truth: that the fight for decent pay and working conditions is ongoing.

Workers’ rights must evolve in line with the realities of modern work. Technology, industries and expectations change but the need for dignity at work, good working conditions and fair pay does not. We are all, I am sure, enormously proud and grateful for our incredible search and rescue crews and the work they do but that is not reflected in this current arrangement and factoring model. Leaving aside the fact that it breaches both national and EU regulations, as well as binding ECJ case law, it plainly undervalues the work that these crews do. The model needs to be scrapped and I hope the Minister will ensure it is.

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