Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the debate. I hope the other Chamber will also debate this issue. Certain services are critical to the common good. Electricity, water, fuel and transport services are all essential on this island and I would like to see them being protected for the consumer. How we go about this is the question.

I have reservations about how the Government could square the Bill's provisions with the need for industrial peace. We have had genuine industrial peace for many years and it has contributed to much of our economic development in the past 20 years, but there was a price to pay.

There were national wage agreements that at the end of the day had to be paid for, in the main by the taxpayer. Unions fought their corner, employers fought theirs and the Government sat as judge in the middle as both employer and representative of the taxpayer.

I, and others, would venture to say that the vast majority would support the view of Senator Quinn that essential utilities, such as electricity and water, should not be cut off by industrial action, but how do we do it? While we strive to rebuild a shattered economy, the last thing we need is to face into large-scale industrial action in essential services. I can remember the power strikes of the 1970s and 1980s where there were rolling power cuts all over the country. Since then, many large employers have been attracted to this country by industrial relations stability and also by a guaranteed supply of labour, water and, most importantly, electricity.

While the threatened ESB strike has for now been averted, we should use all methods of intervention to settle disputes without having to introduce new laws to prevent industrial disruption. Unions in these utilities have a duty to look after their members but they must recognise there is also a duty to the common good. I have spoken to many small business owners who state that they can see business picking up in the economy, but they were horrified to see what was going on with the ESB unions and that they had called a strike for the day after this country would finally leave the bailout programme. The thinking behind this is to bring the country to its knees again and to tell international markets that Ireland is not a place in which to set up because a union can turn off the lights at a moment's notice. It is sheer madness to threaten to cut off the power to the homes of the elderly who are struggling to heat themselves through fuel poverty, to cut off the power to industries which are fulfilling orders for the domestic and foreign markets and to cut off the power to shops at their busiest time of the year when they work all God's hours to bring in the money that will keep them and their employees going in the quiet periods of the year ahead. All of this is because of a perceived deficit in a pension fund.

The power of these utility unions must not be abused. In 2001, IBEC called on the Government to ban strikes in essential services. This has been repeated by Retail Excellence Ireland in November of this year. In August 2010, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development advised the Fianna Fáil Government to consider banning strikes in essential services.

This is not the first time this has been raised, but it is the first time that somebody finally put down a Bill which has started the debate here. Senator Quinn has an impressive CV in business and politics. He has been an employer of thousands up and down the country and I recognise his sincerity in bringing the Bill before us today.

Unfortunately, I cannot support the Bill. I certainly support the spirit and the thought process whereby we can never have a gun held to our head by any group in this country as we allowed happen in the past. I am trying to figure out how to, as the fellow says "square the circle", how we can deal with that in support of the Bill. There were debates about how we should deal with the likes of the power unions and the power supply. At this stage, we need to look seriously at those utilities and never allow the type of threat that was put over head over the past couple of weeks. I am aware it is not taking place, but it is not good enough to even contemplate that, given what the people of this country have gone through over the past number of years. It is an appropriate Bill to have arrived. I am aware that in a sense it is by accident that it arrived. It sends a big message as to where we are at and we need to address this seriously over the coming months.