Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make a few points in response before we move to section 2. I welcome the broad support for the Bill expressed so far by colleagues and I thank them all for their kind comments. I should say in response to Senator Craughwell I do not want to take the credit for drafting the Bill. It was the product of a number of people, and I mentioned Deputy Stagg, who first published it in 2012. Certainly this is an issue on which I have been working for some time. It is ten years since I first advised unions in my role as a practising barrister on the need to legislate to address this difficulty with the ruling of the Competition Authority.

All colleagues have expressed their support in principle. I am especially grateful to those colleagues who spoke from their experience as self-employed musicians and freelancers. I again thank the unions, including SIPTU, the NUJ, Irish Equity, the Musicians Union of Ireland and ICTU, for their immense support and for how they have pushed on this issue to protect their members and these vulnerable self-employed persons.

I also thank the Minister for expressing her support for the Bill in principle. I note what she said about the amendments. I am very grateful to her for agreeing to further debate in October. In response to Senators Craughwell and Gallagher on the question of delay, clearly we want to see the Bill pressed as soon as possible. We want to see this move forward. We want to see a robust Bill and we want to ensure its provisions will work effectively, and the unions share this view absolutely. We are not averse to amendments. I would say to the Minister and Senator Reilly that of course we will be very interested to see the shape of the amendments to ensure they do not undermine the purpose of the Bill. In other words, I understand the purport of the amendments will be to narrow the scope of the exception we will provide for in section 2. Clearly we want to be careful this will not narrow it too much. We will reserve our position on the amendments. We can wait until October once we have a guarantee we will be able to progress through Report Stage and proceed to the Dáil in October. We certainly do not want to see the matter delayed any further.

Senator Reilly was kind enough to mention the female genital mutilation Bill, which I introduced as a Private Members' Bill in the Seanad, which the Minister accepted and which has now become law. It is now an Act to prohibit female genital mutilation. This was an instance of cross-party working where we achieved consensus and moved forward with Government amendments to what had originally been a Private Members' Bill. I had two other Bills go through a similar process. These were a Bill to give humanist celebrants the power to celebrate legal weddings and a Bill to amend section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, which was hugely important particularly for the INTO and other unions in the teaching sector. We did it with qualified Government support and amendments and the Bill was passed.

I am happy to work constructively with the Minister and colleagues on both sides on the Bill, but it is important that the amendments do not narrow the scope of the exemption so much that it is meaningless.Many of us have been critical of the new politics, but the cross-party support we have seen and the positive comments from all sides of the House are good examples of how it can work.