Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It is a simple question. People will then state that we will get them to work for nothing or for half nothing so that we can be competitive. They will end up telling me that that is right and that is the basis on which we build our economy.

Members on all sides of the House fought for 40 years to ensure we were fair and protected people in employment. There were 100,000 people on the streets of Ireland less than two years ago when they saw what was happening in Irish Ferries. People did not like it. It did not meet the vision Irish people have of themselves. It was not right that people were recruited into bonded employment on the ships and paid pence to do work which should have attracted greater money. Any Member who ever spent time working abroad, as a student or in another capacity, knows how strongly he or she felt if he or she found himself or herself in employment where he or she was paid less than the people with whom he or she was working. It was unacceptable.

I have spent my life fighting for people who were not treated fairly in all sorts of ways, for example, women or people on incremental service. There is no answer to the argument that people should be paid equal pay for equal work. I have never found any objection to it. No one dealt with it in this debate.

People spoke of the free movement of labour. This is not about the free movement of labour. The people who take advantage of the bondage in which many of these agency workers find themselves are exactly the same people who would put gates and locks around the country to ensure people could not come here for equal pay for equal work.

If we applied the Treaty of Rome as we envisaged it in the 1960s and 1970s so that people could move about the place, we would not have this difficulty. If someone had told us in 1973 that we could send Irish workers to Germany, France or the UK but they would be paid only half what the local people were paid, how would we have felt about it? That is the question we must ask ourselves. Would we have stated that France, Germany and the UK needed to be competitive and therefore it was okay for Irish workers to be steamrolled, oppressed and stood upon in order that the competitiveness of other countries could be maintained? That is what we are saying in this debate and nothing else.

It is not complex and anyone who tries to introduce complexity into this argument is not examining the reality as we look at it. It is a matter of equal pay for equal work, of protecting, giving dignity to and respecting people.

Members come from communities where, regardless of the part of the country, in the local street in the local town or village there are people from all different types of backgrounds. A person could be unemployed, the veterinary, the shopkeeper or could have another job. We live and mix together and treat each other with dignity. That is what this is about.

I do not want to live in a country where we bring people in from abroad, employ them in factories and keep them tied to there, such as we have heard. A Member cited the example of Pakistani workers in a restaurant who were being paid €50 a month. Mushroom pickers in another part of Ireland were found to be spending almost their entire wages on their substandard accommodation. This is not a correct image of modern Ireland. This is not what the Celtic tiger was about. This is not why we tightened our belts in 1987, 1990 and 1995. This is not the vision we had. The vision we should have is of a place where people do their best and are rewarded for it. It is a place where we have allowed market forces to develop.

What social partnership has done, and some of us bear the brunt for having to compromise on this point, is to allow the market to work in a regulated space so that everyone gets fairness and protection. I am not happy with the level of protection but I realise it is good to a certain point. I am not happy either with the influence the market can exert sometimes but I have had to concede that point. Neither am I happy at times with the increase in wages, salaries and rewards for workers, but it is a compromise we have had to make and sell and for which, perhaps, we have received little thanks from the people we represent. It is a matter of trying to get that balance into it. However, there is no balance in this situation.

The other aspect of this is that if an Irish worker cannot get a job because an agency worker has been employed at half the price of the Irish worker, that feeds xenophobia. Irish workers ask whether such people are taking their jobs. These people do not even know whose job has been taken. They have arrived looking for work, have been employed and, suddenly, are objects of hate and the focus of attention, The result is a growth in the level of xenophobia. We cannot allow that to happen.

There is no basis for doing anything other than accepting the principles in this legislation. It cannot be right to do otherwise. The only question we must ask ourselves is what is right in this situation. What is right is either to accept this Bill, introduce something similar or deal with the issues in it. There is no way other than the right one on this matter.