Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Shamefully, there are still too many people in this country who are going to be bed on a Sunday night not knowing what hours they will be working the following week or the likely level of their income. Therefore, they cannot, as colleagues have stated, pay the rent, organise mortgage repayments, child care costs or their lives in a way that they should be able to do. There is a bigger issue arising. If we deny that these issues need to be addressed in our society and we allow the status quo to pertain, such that people in these scenarios feel increasingly disconnected from society, we will not have the social cohesion or social mobility to which we should be aspiring in this country. In doing so, and I do not wish to exaggerate the point, we are driving people into the arms of the Donald Trumps of this world. People believe that if they do not have a stake in the enterprise for which they work they do not have a stake in society and thus they become more distant from the centre and more distant from their communities. We should all be concerned, regardless of our political viewpoints, if this becomes a feature of this society. We need to understand the messages that people in this country are sending to us. They want fairness in the workplace and they need fairness in our society.People expect to be treated decently. This Bill is a contribution along those lines to address some of those key principles because people need to be valued in the workplace. I welcome the support from colleagues across this Chamber for this important legislation. We, in the Labour Party, are happy to work constructively with officials in the Department, the Minister and the Minister of State to ensure that the type of protections we all want to see for working people in this country in a very dynamic situation are introduced because the status quois not acceptable.