Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome the many people who are in the Gallery to represent the various unions that have been campaigning on this matter for some time. SIPTU, the National Union of Journalists, Equity, the Musicians Union of Ireland and many other unions have a long-standing commitment to reform in this area. The Bill we are considering on Report Stage today represents the culmination of their long campaign. I welcome amendment No. 1, which involves the insertion of a new Long Title, as the Minister has said. My view, which is shared by Senator Nash and our colleagues in the Labour Party group, is that the new Long Title probably more accurately describes the purpose of the Bill, which is to amend the Competition Act 2002 to provide that section 4 of that Act will not "apply to collective bargaining and agreements in respect of certain categories of workers".

I remind the House that we are seeking to ensure the Competition Act is amended in this way to make a real change in respect of what occurred in 2004. As the people in the Gallery and many Members of this House will recall, the Competition Authority ruled in 2004 that a collective agreement between Irish Equity and the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland in respect of voice-overs provided by freelance workers was in breach of section 4 of the Competition Act 2002 on the basis that each actor was a separate self-employed contractor - a separate undertaking, in effect - and therefore it was unlawful for any group of them to collectively fix prices for voice-over services. As the people in the Gallery are well aware and have told many of us, this has had a very detrimental effect on the livelihoods of many people involved in voice-over work. I refer not just to actors working on voice-overs because it is clear that it also had an impact on many other trades, particularly in areas like journalism, performance and the arts. It has had a chilling effect on photographers, writers, musicians, models and many other self-employed people on whose behalf unions have traditionally collectively negotiated.

I should declare a professional interest because as a barrister at the time, I advised the unions on the need to try to resolve this matter by gaining some sort of exemption to the Competition Act 2002. The view taken by the unions, and now also by the Minister and the Government, was that competition law should not be applied in such a rigid way to these groups of vulnerable self-employed workers and that an exemption could and should be sought in respect of them. The Bill before the House relies heavily on the original Competition (Trade Union Membership) Bill 2006, which was proposed ten years ago by President Michael D. Higgins, who was a Deputy at the time, in order to permit an exemption of this kind. Without going into the history in any great detail, a commitment to deal with the matter was then included in the Towards 2016 partnership agreement that was negotiated at national level. The Bill we are discussing this afternoon, which was introduced in this House by the Labour Party group as a Private Members' Bill in January of this year, seeks to resolve this long-standing matter. It was not dealt with in Towards 2016 because of the bailout and the troika requirements. We are glad to see that the matter is being resolved now. I know the unions will be glad to see it resolved. We are happy to accept the Minister's amendments as a way of making the Bill a workable solution to deal with vulnerable groups of self-employed workers in respect of whom competition law should not have been so rigidly applied. This is a proud day for the Seanad because this will be the first Private Members' Bill to pass all Stages in either House of the Oireachtas since the new Government came into office. I think it is a positive sign of new politics. I thank the Minister and, in particular, her officials, with whom we have engaged extensively since the Bill was passed on Committee Stage on 6 July last. I thank the officials for engaging so constructively with us on the text of these amendments.