Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

While I do not wish to repeat myself, Senator Feargal Quinn is right. We need this freedom, not to give the Minister discretion to strike down decisions that have been reached by the joint labour committees and adopted by the Labour Court but in order to make it constitutionally sound from challenge in the courts. Senator White referred to the Duffy-Walsh report. Duffy-Walsh did not consider this issue as the courts only made their judgment after the report was made. It is the John Grace Fried Chicken case that has raised all of this issue. They have drawn attention to the fact that by creating an indirect body we were, effectively, creating crimes for employers and those decisions exposed employers to criminal prosecution. The courts struck it down, stating such a body did not have the right to create crimes for an individual and that it was unconstitutional. To reconstitute that, a system must be put in place whereby the JLCs consider the issues and make a proposal which is adopted by the Labour Court and where the Minister has the unfettered power to say, "Yae" or "Nay", and the Oireachtas makes the adoption. The Minister, if he exercises that power, must set out in writing to the Labour Court the reason he is doing it. This is not intended to second-guess the work of the JLCs and the Labour Court but to make it clear that this is democratic, it is a Minister making an order, a proposition to the Oireachtas, which the Oireachtas can reject or allow through. That is the link in the chain that has to be rebuilt. The parallel of letting priorities is simply not valid. Clearly, by making a set of letting priorities one is not creating criminal offences for people. The legal oversight is entirely different where one is setting letting priorities by a council and then other people implement those. It has been found that these regulations create potential criminal offences. One can only make such potentially criminal statements if it has the extra link of the Minister overseeing it, not rubber-stamping it or ensuring they tick various boxes, but with genuine ability and discretion and bringing it to the Oireachtas with parliamentary oversight. The sole motivation is to create a system that is robust from a constitutional challenge in the knowledge that the previous vehicle was demolished by the courts, specifically on the grounds of lack of policy and principles or parliamentary oversight. I do not think we will agree on this issue. I am doing this not to give myself carte blanche but to make the system legally robust in order that vulnerable workers are not in the same situation as last year when what they thought was protection was pulled from underneath them.