Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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I raise this issue about the dispute at Eddie Stobart Limited because of two major concerns. First, the conditions under which the truck drivers work and, second, the safety of the drivers and the general public.

With regard to conditions, I am seriously concerned that work practices for Stobart Ireland drivers are making such high demands on them that their driving could become unsafe. It must be remembered that much of the work they do is done at night time. For example, a night driver with Monday and Tuesday as his rostered days off might finish on Monday morning at approximately 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. He then goes home to bed, having been driving all night. This is his first rest day. He gets up on Tuesday and must ring the company by 12 noon to find out his next start time. The company position is that it can start him at any time after midnight. Therefore, if he is required to work at midnight, he needs to get some more sleep as he will be driving all night. He will have no further time off until the following Monday morning when the cycle commences again.

Another important issue is that rest time is interrupted by having to phone in for start times and the driver may need to make several calls during the day. In the case of long-haul truck drivers, this should be a matter of concern, as their safety on the road is endangered if they do not get enough rest. The practice at Stobart Ireland is that start times are continually changed with the result that drivers develop no sleeping pattern. Start times can be 1 a.m., 5 a.m., 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. There is no manageable routine for drivers so that fatigue and the risk of falling asleep are serious issues. Procedures at Stobart Ireland include a non-rolling roster, which is highly unusual in the industry. This means that those who are rostered off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays will never be off any weekend or any other time.

I urge the Minister to look at the Organisation of Working Time Act, in particular section 17, with regard to this issue. This section provides for 24-hour notice for start times in circumstances such as this. I call on Stobart Ireland to sit down and address the issues with the drivers. Otherwise, the fatigue issue may lead to accidents. This is a nightmare waiting to happen. Not alone are drivers' lives at risk, but if such huge trucks go out of control, other car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists face significant danger. Stobart Ireland trucks carry a great deal of Tesco foodstuffs around the country and given those close links, I would urge Tesco to use its influence to try to sort out this issue. It would be greatly appreciated if it applied that kind of pressure on Stobart Ireland.

This issue ought to be of huge public interest and I appeal to the media to cover the issue more thoroughly than it has done so far. A light needs to be shone on the issue in order to ensure both the safety of drivers and of the public.

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I thank Deputy Dowds for raising this matter and for the opportunity to respond.

Stobart Ireland is part of the Stobart Group which, I understand, operates from over 40 sites across the UK and Europe. Stobart Ireland began operating in 2008 winning the transport services contract with Tesco in 2010 to distribute all of the products it keeps at depots at Ballymun and Donabate in Dublin. On 15 February last, SIPTU announced that following a ballot of its members, Stobart drivers had voted to strike over concerns about their working conditions and served notice of industrial action. Stobart Ireland drivers subsequently carried out a 36-hour work stoppage on Thursday and Friday, 23 and 24 February. I understand that a picket by drivers was held at the company's main Irish depot in Ballymun, Dublin on Thursday from 6.00 p.m. until 11.30 p.m.

Rest time, rosters and general working conditions have been identified by SIPTU as the factors that led to the decision to strike. SIPTU maintains that these grievances had been put before the company for some time but the company failed to address the issues. It appears that Stobart Ireland responded to the threat of industrial action by taking the unusual step of initiating its own ballot of drivers. The company claimed that its ballot showed that only a minority backed industrial action. It claimed that the outcome demonstrated a lack of support for the planned strike and called on the union to cease its industrial action. SIPTU described the company ballot as a coercive tactic and denied that the outcome of the company ballot could be deemed to articulate the clear voice of the majority of workers in the driver category.

I understand that Stobart Ireland had initially welcomed the suggestion to attend the Labour Relations Commission on the eve of the industrial action. The company requested that the threat of strike action be lifted as a condition of its willingness to engage with the industrial relations dispute services. However, as the industrial action proceeded as planned, the company declined to engage in conciliation talks. According to reports, the company had flown in 40 agency drivers from the UK to replace the striking workers. SIPTU has claimed that the drivers flown in were not informed of the background to the dispute in Dublin before they arrived. It appears that the company did not proceed, however, to deploy the replacement drivers.

I understand that the Labour Relations Commission is maintaining contact with both parties to the dispute and will continue to remain available to assist in trying to resolve the issues in dispute. I would urge the parties to agree to avail of the services of the State's industrial relations machinery and to engage fully in the process. I urge them to put their difficulties and differences behind them and approach the process in good faith and with a view to accepting the outcome of the process.

Ireland's system of industrial relations is essentially voluntary in nature and responsibility for the resolution of industrial disputes between employers and workers, whether in redundancy or other collective disputes, rests with the employer, the workers and their representatives. The State provides the industrial relations dispute settlement machinery to support parties in their efforts to resolve their differences. The Labour Relations Commission has extensive experience in assisting parties to resolve issues of rest time, rosters and other general working conditions and in achieving a high rate of mutually acceptable settlements on such issues. Even what often appears to be the most intractable of disputes is capable of resolution where both sides engage constructively and in good faith in this voluntary process. I would urge the parties involved in this dispute to work together to break the current impasse by utilising the established machinery for dispute resolution, who are available to assist at short notice.

Stobart Ireland is an extremely big company with a large footprint across Ireland. I am aware of it from personal experience on the roads between Cork and Dublin where I have noticed an exceptionally high presence of Stobart trucks. I contend that we have a highly evolved labour relations infrastructure in this country and we would ask companies to engage in corporate social responsibility and come a bit of the road towards meeting needs that will ensure drivers can operate safely. We would urge all companies that win contracts in Ireland to engage constructively with the State machinery set up for dispute resolution. If we can achieve that, I am hopeful some compromise can be hammered out through the labour relations machinery that exists in this country.

Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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I agree with the comments in the Minister of State's detailed statement. Like him, I would urge Stobart Ireland to engage properly with the drivers to achieve a proper resolution of the issues. I do not know to what extent the Minister of State is free to write to such companies to urge them to become actively involved. It would be useful if he could do this. Furthermore, it would be useful if he could urge Tesco to put pressure on Stobart Ireland to deal with the issues. This is a serious concern and if a fatal accident occurred, we would wonder why it happened and why nothing was done about the situation. It is not that Stobart does not have experience of running lorries. Long before Stobart Ireland was established, I saw Stobart trucks on the motorways of Britain and I understand the workers there have better terms than workers here. It is in everybody's interest for this issue to be sorted out. If the Minister of State can make a direct approach to Stobart Ireland, I would appreciate that. I take the Deputy's point. To be fair, however, if we can engage both sides through the industrial relations machinery, that would be the first and best course of action. As Deputy Dowds said, the Stobart group are the high kings of the transport and haulage business in the United Kingdom and now have a significant footprint in Ireland.

We want to ensure that all operators across the island are operating with a degree of corporate social responsibility and, where disputes arise, that we can work towards solutions, always using the machinery. I do not negate the right of a company to take its own ballot privately within its own structures.

Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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It was largely boycotted by the workers.

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I take the Deputy's point. In response, I contend that the legitimacy of the Labour Relations Commission, which has opened its doors to facilitate a process, is one the State, Irish workers and most employers buy into. That is the right way to proceed on this issue. I hope the Stobart organisation will have due regard to that process.

Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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If it does not, what happens?

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Deputy Dowds is more schooled on that. There is legislation to protect every worker's rights and in respect of dispute resolution. It is voluntary by nature, but we must be fair and balanced in how we approach the issue and I would hope any reasonable company, or any entity, would use the voluntary mechanism that is available. That is the way to proceed. If that fails, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.