Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I wish to quote from someone who knows a great deal more about these matters than I do. He wrote, "As awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to be, its Achilles' heel is a growing perception that its rewards, increasingly skewed to the skilled, are not distributed justly." The writer of those words is Alan Greenspan, the recent chairman of the Federal Reserve. By the use of that description he captured the insight that some people are not being treated fairly and are not benefiting from the fruits generated by our market economy. Our failure as politicians to deal with that issue could reduce the support our community and country has for the operation of the free market economy in the long run.

Alan Greenspan easily sits on the far right of our political spectrum. He is a libertarian in his views. If he has identified a weakness in how some workers are rewarded for their enterprise and effort and that not addressing it will become an issue for our society, that offers an insight, which means the Bill introduced by my colleagues in the Labour Party is worth supporting. While I have some questions about the operation of the legislation, its objective in seeking to introduce equality and fairness in the treatment of a portion of our workforce, which is currently lacking, must be supported.

In preparing my contribution I spent some time trying to ascertain the number of agency workers in Ireland and given that we and opponents of this approach spend much time justifying a flexible approach to our economy, with which approach I mostly would agree, I would have thought that time would have been devoted to identifying the portion of our labour force which is vulnerable in the way that has been identified in the Bill. I was disappointed I could not ascertain those figures. I took time to go through the last annual FÁS labour report which provides statistics on every aspect of the labour market, whether on gender or age, but from my perusal of it I was not able to find that information. I can see a flurry of paper on my left and predict that those figures may be produced at a later stage in this debate. They did not receive the prominence and weight I would have expected them to receive.

We must acknowledge that the flexibility and creativity of our market economy play a vital role in sustaining our society. We also must acknowledge that since 1998 a phenomenal 600,000 jobs have been created. Flexibility plays an important role in such job creation. The important issue is to ensure a proper balance is struck between making an ethical judgement on how the labour market performs while acknowledging that the labour market needs to perform, generate opportunities and drive wealth creation. We have not struck the right balance. I can think of no greater symbols to illustrate how that balance is wrong than the issues raised concerning the Turkish workers in Gama in this country and the treatment of workers in Irish Ferries. If we accept that an economy must be embedded in a moral framework within which there are basic thresholds for the treatment of people, we must acknowledge those episodes were fundamentally unacceptable. Strong legislation is required to deal with these issues and to ensure such incidents do not recur.

Many of the issues raised clearly deserve action and merit the support of this Bill. I refer to such issues as sick pay, holiday entitlements and when a person's employment can be terminated. The current conditions for these workers are unacceptable. I speak as someone who employed agency workers in a former life and recognised the role they could play in the operation of the organisation for which I was responsible. The limitations in terms of how they were rewarded and treated were apparent to me as an employer.

A number of questions merit further investigation if this Bill is to progress further. One is the question of payment and the principle of equal payment. There is a framework as to how workers are paid. There is a basic threshold of a minimum wage which people need to survive and that should be adhered to at all times. Beyond that, there is complex framework in terms of how good a person is at his or her job, his or her level of performance, the length of time he or she has been working and his or her qualifications. Such considerations give rise to a number questions that should be addressed in this Bill, but from my reading of it, they do not appear to be.

For example, if I were a permanent worker employed in a company for ten years, had acquired qualifications for which I had received an increase in salary, had performed in such a way that had resulted in my receiving salary increases and was loyal to that company, should a temporary worker who came to work in that company be paid the same salary? The answer to that question is "No". Monetary rewards should be in place that reward performance, experience and longevity of service. The principle of equal payment is a blunt one in that it does not recognise the merits and factors that drive the level of pay of permanent workers.

We need to be careful in ascertaining those who constitute agency workers. It is important to address the lack of information in that respect. Many agency workers are paid more than permanent workers because they are willing to take a risk, to be unemployed for some periods and have no pension contributions, which is an essential point. Many agency workers are paid more than permanent workers to justify the lack of those provisions and reward the decisions they have made. I read the relevant sections of the Bill carefully and an implication of it is that people who work in particular sectors would be disadvantaged as a result of its implementation. However, this Bill recognises that we are more than an economy; we are a society. For an economy to perform well, there are standards and objectives that must be delivered to ensure people's work is recognised. Given that, we support this Bill.