Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Cathaoirleach is right and I apologise.

There followed a meeting between the Department and SIPTU on 13 June to discuss the outstanding moneys due. SIPTU wrote again to the Department on 11 July, detailing these cases alongside a number of others involving former workers from a number of other schemes. SIPTU received no response and wrote again to the Department on 13 September in pursuit of outstanding moneys for its members. In this correspondence, Eddie Mullin, a SIPTU senior sector organiser detailed that the union had written to the Department in 2014 confirming its intention to refer a breach of the community employment, CE, supervisor enhanced redundancy agreement of 2002, as amended in 2005, to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. In October 2014, at the request of the Department, SIPTU had agreed to put this referral on hold to allow further talks between the two parties. One meeting took place but no progress was made. SIPTU referred this matter back to the WRC last September. Almost five months have passed and the WRC still has not received a response from the Department of Social Protection to its invitation to attend a hearing.

With the greatest respect, I genuinely do not understand why the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is here today. I did not direct this question to her or her Department.Is it okay for a Government Minister to ignore Labour Court recommendations? It is the Minister of State's colleague, Deputy Leo Varadkar, who is ignoring them. What signal does this send to employers and unions that a senior Minister is ignoring the highest body in the State's industrial relations machinery? What message does it send that the Department of Social Protection did not even bother to tell SIPTU that it had chosen to pass on this issue to another Department, if that is what has happened? What about the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, which has been waiting for a response for five months on whether the Government will attend the hearing to resolve the related matter of the breach of the community employment supervisor enhanced redundancy agreements? Will the Minister of State at least confirm that the Government will accept the WRC's invitation to talks? Is she even aware that the invitation has been outstanding for the past five months? We have Ireland's largest union waiting for a response that has not come. We also have the Workplace Relations Commission waiting for a response. We have 16 men and their families, seven years after they lost their jobs, waiting for this payment and the Labour Court's recommendations to be honoured. I hope the Minister of State will be able to give me some precise answers today.