Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The sectoral employment orders will be permitted to cover areas to do with pensions. Senator Walsh has made a strong case for sectoral employment orders in the private sector because they can also include, as expressed in the Bill, coverage for pensions. We would all welcome that. As Senator Walsh will be aware, the JLC system fell foul of the superior courts a couple of years ago. The system was reviewed and we introduced a joint labour committee system. There are a number of discussions ongoing on potentially new orders emanating from JLCs.

Joint labour committees, JLCs, have been in existence for generations in this country and the United Kingdom. They served a strong purpose in terms of ensuring that those who were working in vulnerable sectors of the economy had more significant coverage and protections, and improved pay, than they would if they did not have the protection of a joint labour committee. The joint labour committee orders were agreed by employers, notwithstanding the fact that they covered other employers which were not necessarily involved in that process. This was an issue the courts found against and we were conscious of it when we were reconstructing a JLC system that was fit for purpose for the 21st century.

It is the case that issues to do with competitiveness have to be taken into consideration when one is introducing wage-setting mechanisms. We are very clear on that. That is something that is explicit in terms of the legislation governing JLCs, sectoral employment orders, the national minimum wage, collective bargaining and registered employment agreements. Section 16 of the Bill sets out a comprehensive and challenging set of factors that the court must take into account when it is making a recommendation to the Minister in respect of a sectoral employment order. Amendment No. 4, from Senator Cullinane, would add two further factors that the court would be required to take into account. I have given consideration to these criteria in the drafting of the Bill and I do not consider it necessary to refer specifically to median earnings, changes or proportions above or below particular proportions of median earnings, particularly where one of the criteria specifically requires the court to look at the general level of remuneration in other sectors where similar workers are employed. The Bill also requires the court in making a recommendation to be of the view that the recommendation is reasonably necessary to ensure fair and sustainable rates of remuneration in the sector concerned. As Senator Cullinane will be aware, the suggestion in relation to "the pervasiveness of part time and/or short hour contracts" is part of a wider decent work agenda, including the issue of zero and low-hour contracts, that I am pursuing. Accordingly, I cannot accept the amendment.