Paul Bradford (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and Senator Quinn's Bill. I also welcome this debate, and it is refreshing to hear contributions like Senator Landy's. Senator Landy and I may come from different places on the political spectrum but I hope it will not in any way affect our political friendship. His contribution nonetheless would not have been out of place in the political and industrial language of the 1970s and 1980s.

I spoke to a number of friends and colleagues earlier and as we normally do, we wandered into all sorts of political tours of history. We were discussing the former British Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. I reminded one of my friends about Kinnock's address to a famous conference of the British Labour Party when he tackled the militant element within the party. He challenged the Liverpool Labour Party leadership, which had a militant tendency and at that stage was running and ruining the city. As Kinnock stated, taxpayers' money was being used to send taxi drivers across Liverpool to hand out redundancy notices to members. His challenge at the time to the party was for it to live in reality rather than the ideology of a past era. He asked the party to accept that society had changed and the relationship between workers and their bosses had also moved on, with everybody having to accept new realities.

In a few days the country will mark the official exit from the bailout. The Taoiseach, his Government and anybody concerned about the future of the country wants Ireland to be a place where people can invest and we can put hundreds of thousands of unemployed people back to work. Anybody wishing to invest in the country needs a number of certainties; such people need certainty about investment policy, long-term planning, taxation and the issue raised by Senator Quinn. We are lucky not to have an ESB strike on our hands next week as that would be an appalling vista for the country. It is not just a question of lights being shut off as tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of workers across the country would have been at significant financial disadvantage as a result.

There is a role for worker representation and unions but we have all moved into different types of thinking, and both employers and employees must see co-operation as part of the new and better equation. In his Bill Senator Quinn makes it very clear that he is not seeking the removal of the right to strike, picket or take industrial action. The legislation is trying to ensure that citizens of the country - workers and non-workers - will have certain guarantees of essential services, and it is very difficult to argue that there should not be a guarantee that when one needs to switch on a light, it will come on, or that when a tap is turned, the water supply will work. We are discussing the new water Bill in the House but we must ensure such basic services are guaranteed in whatever ways are practical and possible.

This should not precipitate a major philosophical or political divide and the issue is about common sense. This is about offering certain assurances to every citizen in the State. Whether one is young or old, it is not unfair to expect basic services to be guaranteed. Everybody in the House demands basic health services, which is correct.

We rightly demand that basic education and other essential services be protected. This proposal would ensure some of these basic services would be guaranteed and could not be switched off at a whim. When there are industrial, political or other disputes, as Mr. Churchill said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” Why have the war-war option at all? Why not only have the option of jaw-jaw to force people to negotiate and compromise? Society, industrial policy and labour relations have moved on; our industrial relations mechanisms should move on also. Basic utility services such as water and electricity, utilities essential not just to the everyday running of the economy but also lives, require certain minimum guarantees of supply. Accordingly, I hope Senator Feargal Quinn’s Bill will receive the maximum consideration from the Government.