Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will confine my contribution to questions but I wish to make a brief comment. I welcome David Begg as a fellow trade unionist. He has championed the cause of workers for decades. I had reason to be involved in the trade union movement with David Begg in Telecom Éireann and in Eircom. It was one of the leading companies which showed how partnership in the workplace could function.

Some people like to obliterate the memory of history about certain aspects of our past. Last week in this House, in a debate about history as a subject in the junior certificate curriculum, I made the point that the first I learned of Larkin and Connolly was not in the classroom but rather from my late uncle, a lifelong trade unionist and Labour Party activist. David Begg gave an excellent resumé of the events of 1913. It might be of interest to him to know that on 27 September 1913, within a few hours of a trade union congress in Clonmel, both Larkin and Connolly visited my home town of Carrick-on-Suir to inspect tenements, which Larkin described as the worst he had seen any place in Europe. This problem was not confined to Dublin as it was also a problem in rural Ireland. It is probably a little-known fact - it certainly was not known to Larkin at that time - that his great rival, William O'Brien, was actually living in Carrick-on-Suir at the time as his father was an RIC man. As David Begg noted, William later moved to Dublin to become a tailor and he become involved in the trade union movement.

In the case of rural Ireland, the unrest led on to the issue of the soviets that were set up by workers across Tipperary - in Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary town and Cahir - and in Waterford, Cork and Limerick when the Cleeve's company unilaterally cut its workers' wages by 33.3%. We are celebrating the centenary of 1913. Is it not time this country, the Government and the party of which I am a member, which is in partnership with Fine Gael, introduced legislation for collective bargaining? Is it not time we commemorated this centenary in a tangible way by bringing forward that legislation? I ask David Begg to state ICTU's view on that legislation and how it should be shaped.

It was mentioned that William Martin Murphy travelled abroad and that he was an expert on the transport business. He travelled to America and across Europe. I wonder, if he had spent some little time studying humanity and human resources when he was abroad, whether David Begg would be addressing the House today.