Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials and thank them for the work they have done in drawing up this Bill. I am aware that the Government engaged in an intense process of consultation with the social partners on the legislation. Unlike my colleague, Senator Coghlan, I understand the reason such legislation takes a long time to produce. Nothing is easy and considerable compromise is required. Having been part of the negotiations on Sustaining Progress which resulted in the Bill, I am delighted it has finally been presented to the House.

This legislation reflects all that is important and good in the partnership process. It demonstrates that Ireland has come a long way in the 15 years since trade union leaders told employers they should ask their workers to take their brains to work with them, rather than treating them as statistics. The Bill is a further significant step forward. Its importance lies in its provisions to make employees and employers confront the problems faced by the other side. Workers must sit down with management to put their points of view and vice versa and both parties must share, engage and argue. This is how creative progress is made in any proper enterprise and can only be beneficial.

I first sought out section 14 on confidentiality. The confidentiality clause has, correctly, been included in the legislation to protect enterprises. We do not want circumstances in which members of the consultation forum are unable to have an unspoken thought, nor do we want leaks and people deciding to deliver to the world around them every item of information they encounter. A professional approach requires that members of the forum respect confidentiality.

This legislation demonstrates a welcome and positive attitude on the part of Government and reflects maturing partnership. The obverse approach is reflected in the current set of proposals made by the Irish Continental Group, to which Senator Hanafin referred. The attitude of Irish Ferries is indicative of the direction Ireland does not want to take. The company is attempting to depress wages, repress workers and bring us back to the future of a spailpín fánach type economy in which immigrants and foreign workers are exploited, Irish workers sacked and money taken from the taxpayer. This irresponsible company will make decent businesses uncompetitive and is a terrible reflection of our economy at international level. Irish Ferries will be at the bottom of the pile when I choose how I intend to travel abroad. This episode also demonstrates the importance of ensuring there are no monopolies. It is an appalling reflection on Ireland and indicates that we appear to have lost our way.

In the past 20 years, we have attempted, through the partnership process, to avoid a race to the bottom in terms of wages and, instead, to increase productivity while maintaining competitiveness and rewarding workers adequately and fairly. This approach has worked extraordinarily well. Only once in the past 15 years — either in 2000 or 2001 — did Irish productivity fail to increase more rapidly than in all other western European countries. I do not refer to economic growth, an important consideration, but to output per person working in the economy. It is important to recognise this fact.

It is also important that those who repeat the rip-off Ireland mantra recognise that the proper and decent reward I and many others negotiated for workers is reflected in higher costs and prices. Ireland is not a cheap country and we are not about to reverse policy and pay people peanuts. Higher prices are the inevitable result of adequate, correct and fair remuneration.

Irish Ferries is trying to turn legislation on redundancy on its head. Sacking an employee and replacing him or her a week later does not constitute redundancy. It is appalling that the management of Irish Ferries has proposed to contemptuously charge the taxpayer 60% of the costs it incurs in putting Irish workers out of work and recruiting foreign workers at rates of pay far lower than those agreed. Those who believe otherwise should apply the company's logic to their own position and imagine their reaction if they were told tomorrow they would be paid half their previous wage from Monday onwards and that the other extraordinary conditions being put to workers in Irish Ferries would apply.

Why would 70% of workers in the company indicate they wished to accept the deal put forward by management? The reason is terror and the company's policy of frightening people and panicking them into the lifeboats to protect themselves. Workers are worried about their families' future and whether they will have something in the bank for a rainy day. Perhaps they were never fully informed, which brings us back to the legislation before us. I note the selective use of information in the statements issued by Irish Ferries. They inform us, for example, that ferry car business decreased last year but do not bother to mention that freight business has increased significantly. They also failed to note that, as Senator Morrissey pointed out earlier, we are fast approaching the point at which our ports will no longer be able to cope with the level of exports and imports they are processing.

Ten years ago, who would have thought that a regular freight service would operate from Shannon-Foynes to Rotterdam? The ports of Dublin and Drogheda are chock-a-block and new ports need to be developed. A forum of the type established under the new legislation would provide the relevant information to workers and require them to share with management responsibility for finding solutions to any problems faced by their company. The idea that a workforce should be completely oblivious to problems, risks and dangers confronting the company is daft. The value of the forum is that it will make the job of management easier. Everybody will be made aware of problems and will be required to help find solutions if the company is not to go under.

If Irish Ferries proceeds in the manner it proposes, Ireland would be better off without it and it would be preferable to try to find other employment for workers who wish to work elsewhere. We cannot countenance the company's proposals which were made immediately before negotiations begin on a possible new national partnership. They undermine trust and confidence. Little is required in the partnership process, whether on the part of IBEC on the management side, ICTU on the trade union side or the Government, to give sustenance to those who oppose agreement. Opponents will point to the actions of those on the other side and argue that the process will never work. Activity of the type proposed by Irish Ferries will reverberate around the trade union movement in the next couple of months and the company's name will be mentioned at every upcoming trade union meeting. Members will be asked why their trade unions should enter partnerships with employers or trust Irish business. Irish Ferries does not reflect business people in general. Most are happy to seek a decent profit, pay their workers a decent wage and remain competitive by arguing the toss between both. Access to accounts and information in Irish Ferries would have prevented us from reaching the point we are at today. This attempt by Irish Ferries to make itself anti-competitive by undermining competition with taxpayers' money, so it can sack workers and employ and exploit foreign workers to undercut its competitors on other routes, is unfair under European legislation. It is unacceptable, anti-European and uncompetitive and we cannot put State money into it. If we need legislation to copperfasten that position, we should introduce it.

Legislation, however, should not be necessary. Our redundancy legislation cannot be stretched to achieve the outcome Irish Ferries desires. The European directives will not allow us to put money into a company which then, using that money, is in a position to undermine the competition. It is not on, we cannot allow this to happen. It is not something we should be part of and if it goes to the wire on Monday, we should make our position clear. All speakers in this House and people across the labour spectrum have indicated their worries about it. Management is doing this without indicating what level of pain it will soak up. How many people from eastern Europe will be asked to run the company? None. This is an old fashioned anti-worker approach that we cannot accept.

It is important that we see this Bill as part of a wider scheme to draw in workers. This does not give something away, it offers something. It does not expose the inner workings of accounts or strategies, it harnesses the creativity, views and ideas of the workforce and means that all sides must confront the issues, problems, threats and difficulties faced by a company. That must be a good thing. In the way that social partnership has shown itself a model of progress for economies across the world, this could do the same.

There are responsibilities alongside the legislation. The workers representatives on the forum must know why they are going in: not just to protect workers' views but to ensure that the enterprise is stronger for their involvement and the establishment of the forum, to ensure they have their input and that they take responsibility for decisions that come out of there. Representation at any level means that once a forum makes a decision, it must be sold by those who made the decision. The same goes for management, it must be courageous and talk to workers in a way to which it has not been accustomed but in a way that can only be good for the enterprise.

This is fine legislation that will be good for the economy. It shows that we are mature in Irish labour, industry and business and we can talk to each other, share information and move forward in a way that is good for everyone in the economy, not just the bosses and owners but also the workers and their families. This legislation is a Chinese bargain, where everyone walks away from the table having gained something.