Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 28, line 11, to delete "A person" and substitute "A person under whose direction the activities are being conducted".

We had a discussion on this matter and I will not the labour the point. This amendment relates to the Part dealing with offences and penalties where a person contravenes a condition of a licence granted under the relevant statutory provisions. We propose the wording should be changed to read "A person under whose direction the activities are being conducted". It is interesting to note that employees working for the Rhatigan company who are members of the UNITE union protested outside the gates of these Houses today. They had been working for a subcontractor on a school site and I am sure we could find other similar cases. This is the issue to which we are pointing in this amendment.
An employee could be contracted to do work that is in contravention of the Act in the forestry sector and that person could be penalised, but the person who instigated that work or the owner could potentially get away with the contravention by saying they did not know anything about it. They could put their hands up and say that it is not what they asked the person to do. We are trying to cover that loophole in this amendment and to make sure the person under whose direction the activities are being conducted, namely, the person at the top of the pyramid, is the one who is punished as well as somebody else who might have broken the law in contravention of the Act.