Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response but it does not give me much succour and it will not give many employees much succour. We must look at the context in which we are working. In recent years we have had a number of high-profile industrial relations disputes involving workers in a number of companies in the State, particularly those in lower paid jobs and on zero-hours contracts and the minimum wage. We have seen some very unscrupulous tactics used by those employers against any workers they see as stepping outside the norm, anybody looking for union recognition in the workplace or anybody standing up for the union recognition that they have. Unscrupulous employers have been very quick to take away people's hours and give them less favourable working standards. These are quite hard to prove in court because of the nature of the contracts allowed under the legislation we have at present. This is one reason we fear an employer, particularly in the lower pay bracket, will possibly wonder whether people coming with an attachment order on their wages are troublesome and whether the order will cause any hassle or mean the employer will have to send a manager or assistant manager to court, which would cost money. This legislation and this section will have knock-on effects. Although the Minister does not intend it, there will be these unintended consequences about which I am very fearful in the climate in which we are working given the way employers have been treating employees in this country over the past number of years. I do not take any comfort from the Minister of State's comments in this regard.