Michael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, and compliment him on the good work he is doing in promoting job creation. I also compliment Senator Feargal Quinn on bringing forward this legislation for debate. In every utterance he makes in this House he is constructive and promotes the country’s interests. I know he is motivated by the best possible intentions in introducing this legislation which proposes to provide for the security of supply of electricity and mains water which can be deemed to be critical utility services. While the Minister will not accept the Bill, we are having a mature debate on how to ensure critical utilities are protected from industrial disruption.

The recent threat of an ESB strike brings into sharp focus how vulnerable we really are in this regard. The proposed action was disproportionate, with one group of workers putting the livelihoods of many other workers across the country at risk. That is simply unacceptable. I met many concerned small retailers in my home town of Ballinasloe who were concerned that they would be without a supply in the run-up to Christmas and, accordingly, not able to keep their businesses open. If the strike had gone ahead, the impact on their businesses and employment levels would have been catastrophic. We have many large manufacturing companies across the country that have continuous manufacturing processes which require continuity of supply. The manufacturing and production sector would have been severely damaged by such a strike.

Much time has been spent by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and every other Minister in repairing the damage done to our reputation in recent years. Overnight, all of this good work could have been undone and we could have suffered a serious loss of investment, not to mention the impact on the ordinary citizen. The elderly in particular were likely to be seriously stressed and discommoded by having no light and heat over the Christmas period. Our transport system and other vital services would also have been severely affected.

It is not right for key utilities to be used as a bargaining tool in an industrial relations dispute. While I have some reservations about the use of statutory provisions that contain criminal sanctions, I feel that consideration must be given to establishing negotiated agreements that include a no-strike clause in identified critical utility providers. That is a road we should go down. We have had good industrial relations in recent years and we can never go back to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s. I pay tribute to the staff of the Labour Relations Commission and to all of those working for the industrial relations machinery of the State. They have ensured that days lost through strikes have been kept to a minimum in recent years. However, we saw last week how vulnerable we are and we need to address this particular issue if we want to continue to develop our economy. We still have more than 390,000 people unemployed. We cannot do anything or allow anything to happen that will in any way damage our efforts to get our people back to work and to attract inward investment.

I totally acknowledge the right of employees to withdraw their labour if they are not being treated fairly by their employer, but where key utilities are concerned, we need to put in place special systems and structures to deal with that. Disputes within those critical providers must be capable of being addressed without resort to strike action. I applaud Senator Quinn for giving us the opportunity to have a discussion on this key issue. We must ensure we never arrive at a situation in which critical utility providers are closed because of an industrial dispute.