Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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97. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation whether the construction-related enterprise-level agreement proposed in the industrial relations (amendment) Bill 2014 will be binding on the construction sector as a whole; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44405/14]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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I have been raising the Kishogue dispute directly with the Minister for weeks to little or no advantage. Will the construction-related enterprise agreements that are proposed in the industrial relations (amendment) Bill 2014 be binding on the construction sector as a whole? It is clear that the current crisis within the construction industry is pushing hundreds of workers into poverty. I am raising this issue because I do not believe the Government comprehends the scale and the immediacy of the problem.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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As the Deputy is aware, I recently published the heads of the proposed industrial relations (amendment) Bill 2014. The heads of the Bill are available and are currently the subject of pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. I will set out the two main purposes of the Bill. First, it will provide for the reintroduction of a mechanism for the registration of employment agreements between an employer or employers and trade unions governing terms and conditions in individual enterprises. Such enterprise-level agreements will not be legally binding beyond the individual enterprise. It would not be constitutionally permissible to legislate in that way. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling in the McGowan case, enterprise-level registered employment agreements were not given general application on a sector-wide basis.

Separately, the Bill will provide for a new statutory framework for the establishment of minimum rates of remuneration and other terms and conditions of employment for a specified type, class or group of workers, particularly in the context of transnational provision of services and in the context of promoting harmonious relations between workers. In effect, this will be a framework to replace the former sectoral registered employment agreements system, which included the construction and electrical contracting sector. In this context, the new framework proposes a mechanism whereby, in future, at the request separately or jointly of organisations substantially representative of employers and-or workers, the court can initiate a review of the pay, pension and sick pay entitlements of workers in a particular sector. If it deems it appropriate, it will be able to make a recommendation to the Minister on the matter. If the Minister is satisfied that the process provided for in the new legislation has been complied with by the Labour Court, he shall make the order. The standard provisions dealing with the laying of orders before the Oireachtas are proposed. Where such an order is made in relation to a class, type or group of workers, it will be binding across the sector to which it relates and will be enforceable by the National Employment Rights Authority.

This mechanism is constitutionally robust compared with the previous registered employment agreement system, which was struck down by the Supreme Court. Prior to the enactment of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2012, that system provided for employment agreements between trade unions and employer representatives to be given general application by being registered by the Labour Court. As enterprise-level agreements never were and will not be legally binding beyond the subscribing parties, the same constitutional issues regarding the delegation of legislative authority to the Minister that arose in the McGowan case do not apply in such cases.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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The Construction Industry Federation has acknowledged that there is industrial relations instability at the moment because of the absence of registered employment agreements. It has said that this is causing reputational damage to the industry. Workers are being forced into bogus self-employment contracts. They are not getting the industry wage. They are being paid below the minimum wage in this State. This practice is rife across Government contracts where the Government is the employer. I know of a young man who works for Kishogue. When he went onto the site one day, he was told he was no longer employed but instead was self-employed and was employing a handful of other workers. He was given a sum of money to pay those workers, who had not been paid for weeks. Of course that sum of money was not near to reaching the minimum wage. The Government has hidden behind the Contractors Administration Services, Scope and the National Employment Rights Authority, all of which have been completely ineffectual to date in dealing with this crisis. We need to know whether the forthcoming industrial relations Bill will deal with cases in which the principal contractor washes his or her hands of the actions of subcontractor companies. Such practices are leading to the creation of bogus self-employment contracts.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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The Deputy's initial question asked whether enterprise-level agreements will be sectorally applied. Those agreements would not be sectorally applied, of course, because they are agreed between two contracting parties, in many respects. Broadly speaking, the registered employment agreements would be applied across a sector, as was the case with the registered employment agreements system that was struck down in the McGowan case two years ago.

As a Government, we have worked hard to ensure that the wage-setting mechanisms sought by the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, and trade unions address two matters, those being, to ensure that reputable employers have a level playing pitch when tendering for work and that standards and training in the construction industry are protected. This is important if Ireland is to have a competitive advantage. Wage-setting mechanisms, joint industrial councils and so on ensured that there were always high standards of training in the construction industry. It is also important to ensure that there is not a race to the bottom in terms of workers' pay.

We have worked hard to re-establish a registered employment agreement, REA, system. Six sectors of the economy were covered by the previous regime. Deputy Tóibín and colleagues have engaged heavily in the pre-legislative scrutiny process. I look forward to that continuing.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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The REAs will not be worth the paper they are written upon if the trend of direct labour within the construction industry being transformed into subcontractor self-employed labour continues. There has been a significant increase in the number of relevant contracts tax, RCT, cases. The CSO figures for the second quarter indicated a 1.14% increase in the number of people working, yet a nearly 4% increase in the number of self-employed persons. Many of the latter are RCT cases. I have with me a notice from a recruitment agency advertising "labour" in the construction industry as having no bank holidays, sick days or redundancy payments to pay. In other words, it is a form of contract that denudes the worker of every labour right that he or she should have. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has an infrastructure that is meant to investigate the false use of these subcontracting certificates, but it is so slow that workers are left on strike on building sites for months on end until the building work is completed and attention moves elsewhere. Those workers never get the justice to which they are entitled. The forthcoming industrial relations Bill will focus on ensuring decent wages for decent workers and that decent employers can be confident that they will not be undercut by unscrupulous employers, but we must also focus on the issue of forced subcontracting.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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It is a matter in which I am interested personally apart from the fact that I am the Minister of State with responsibility for it. I understand that the issues involved in the dispute in question have been referred to the Labour Court. From the industrial relations point of view, it is important that the court can make determinations on the relevant questions of employment law.

I have every confidence in the National Employment Rights Authority's enforcement of the minimum wage legislation. I also have every confidence in the scope section of the Department of Social Protection and the Revenue Commissioners, the authorities that will make determinations on whether self-employment exists in a situation similar to the one referred to by Deputy Tóibín. It should be left to them. However, these kinds of situation could emerge in the continued absence of an REA-type system. We are legislating to reintroduce a wage-setting mechanism to ensure that workers are protected and adequately rewarded with a view to promoting harmonious industrial relations and affording employers a level playing field.