Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I, along with Senator Doherty, congratulate Senator Kelly and his Labour Party colleagues on bringing forward this important and testing Bill. It has been terrible to listen to Members trying to avoid agreeing with the very ordinary, sensible and pragmatic measures of the Bill. There were weasel words, false arguments and a specious approach to the relevant issues.

The legislation is very simple. When I was listening to the debate, I thanked God we joined Europe. Senator Doherty might not agree. I heard the arguments propounded in the legislation in the early 1970s when I was fighting with many individuals to obtain simple rights for workers in respect of unfair dismissals, equal treatment and equal pay for equal work. The issues are arising again. This is a one-principle Bill in that all it is calling for is equal pay for equal work. There is no complexity attaching to it.

No issue of competition arises unless we say we ought to pay people nothing to maintain competitiveness. My colleagues on the Government side should note that the Competition Authority issued a statement, which we all received in the past month, pointing out the areas in which we are and are not competitive. We do not have a problem in terms of labour costs. We have problems with telephone costs, energy costs and access to broadband, and all these issues come ahead of labour costs. I say this in good faith.

The practices that are taking place are purely exploitative. Agency workers are being taken on and used. Senator Callely stated we should hand the matter over to the social partners for them to deal with it. As it happens, I participated for years in social partnership negotiations and led them for quite some time. Consequently, I can assure the House that this legislation would help social partnership. Would we be prepared to wait for consensus on social partnership? It is a bit like considering how we dealt with issues in the past. We must determine what we are talking about. We are talking about people in bondage, who are tied in a bond in a country far from home. They are transported, and almost trafficked, to Ireland and put into tied work where they are used and abused. This used to happen in the past and it was called slavery. How long would we have waited if President Abraham Lincoln had been told to hang on for consensus in the south of the USA and they would surely get rid of slavery in a short time? This is not an issue of consensus; this is an issue of right and wrong. I want to hear just one person tell me why it is right for two people doing the same job to be paid different amounts of money.