Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The Government had our support in allowing free access to this country for citizens of the accession states. However, we did not support it when it decided to load the dice against them by telling them that they would have no access to social assistance until they had been here for two years, therefore putting them in a non-negotiating position with employers. Happily, and not for the first time, the EU has now forced the Government to accord those recently arrived and very welcome guests some rights if treated badly by an Irish employer.

I apologise to the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, that I was not here for his speech. Unfortunately, I had two meetings to attend simultaneously. However, I read his script carefully. I have great regard for the Minister of State, who is the nicest of men, but I am tired of the Government's hand-wringing woe regarding the exploitation of workers. It is not that hard to do something about it.

It is worth pointing out that it was the last national agreement that proposed an increase in the number of inspectors. It is now January 2006, a time when we are beginning to negotiate the next one, and the Minister of State has only now said that it will happen, because someone in Government sat on the proposal for years. One cannot believe that the delay happened because it was forgotten about. It was because the Government did not want to expand the numbers of inspectors, since it did not want the resulting greater number of inspections.

We have that over and over. It took a series of dreadful tragedies in the building industry to get the Health and Safety Authority off its behind and start enforcing the law. We were also tired of the authority turning up to investigate after the event. I remember how Mr. Justice Kelly wondered how it had taken it so long before it took a case to court regarding lack of safety and closed down an entire Zoe Developments site because of its appalling safety practices.

We now have the beginnings of serious efforts at safe practice in the building industry, but it took years. Will we now go through the same process again regarding every issue that we raised today? Nowhere in the Minister of State's script can I find any commitment to examining whether the stories that we are all hearing of individuals here, there and everywhere being treated badly, manipulated and abused are simply isolated incidents. Why do they not find out what is happening by asking and looking? They do not want to find out the truth. I should have known from the very beginning that if the Progressive Democrats were keen on having a vast number of workers enter this country from the EU, it would be to look after their friends in business rather than the immigrants. We must be very careful here.

The issue Senator Norris raised is extremely threatening for people because if the Competition Authority is right that competition law precludes people who are nominally self-employed from joining a trade union and using a trade union to negotiate a collective position for them, the 70,000 so-called self-employed in the building industry will not be allowed to have a trade union represent them, even if the Labour Court rules, as the Minister told us, that they have the right to the same standards as those in the building industry. They will not be allowed even to talk to each other. That is what the Competition Authority forced SIPTU to do in the case of actors. It will apply similarly to other people who are self-employed. The Government is the only body that can change that by changing the industrial relations legislation and ensuring that the Competition Authority butts out of this area and deals with those who are ripping off the country.

I was intrigued by Senator Cox's constructive and thoughtful contribution. She was wrong, however, because there is no conflict between good-quality, well-paid employment, with good social protection, and success in the world economy. If we want evidence of that, and nobody wants to do this, we should look to Germany. In spite of its domestic market problems, Germany is the world's most successful exporter in terms of innovation, technology and its capacity to compete. It does not do that by ripping off workers but by creating a genuine social partnership, which this country has never really got into because a genuine social partnership means that the burdens and the benefits are shared. As far as I am concerned, it is more and more the case that social partnership in Ireland means workers sharing the burdens and big business holding on to most of the benefits.

It is a great pity that the Government decided to amend what was an innocuous enough motion calling for measures on which I thought everybody in this country was agreed.