Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

When dealing with this Bill in the Dáil, it came to my attention that the legislation as presented at that stage would not allow for existing employee representatives to approve a pre-existing agreement. That was because of the nature of the drafting which initially stated "These representatives must be elected or appointed for the purposes of negotiations under this Act." Pre-existing representatives would not have met that requirement, of course, so I brought in that provision to enable those enterprises that already have agreements toratify them.

The other matter concerns the word "method". I wanted to ensure that it is not limited in meaning but only to the choice of direct involvement of citizens or information and consultation to representatives. As I outlined on Committee Stage, many different methods are in use in various enterprises, so I wanted to ensure that they were legal for the purposes of this Bill.