Seanad debates

Thursday, 12 July 2018

10:30 am

Photo of Gerard CraughwellGerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know what kind of an employer Ryanair is because I do not work for it, but I respect the right of workers to organise and seek to negotiate their own terms and conditions. Unless Ryanair is prepared to sit down and negotiate with its employees, there will be a strike. As there is a failure of industrial relations whenever a strike is called, I ask Ryanair and the trade union representatives to sit down to solve whatever the problem is in order that members of the public can travel in peace and with an assurance that they will be able to fly back home from wherever they are going.

The Leader has been wonderful throughout this term in facilitating most of the requests made of him. Last week my colleague, Senator Gabrielle McFadden, mentioned the Defence Forces, on which I ask for a full debate very early in the next session. In particular, we need to debate the strategies for retention and how we will solve pay and recruitment issues. I have said time and again that one cannot recruit one's way to experience as experience is gathered over time. In his answers to questions about retention, the Minister of State said he was putting strategies in place to allow those who had already left to come back. The Leader and I know that they are leaving to take up better paid jobs. Unless the terms and conditions and salaries are good, they will not come back. I ask the Leader to facilitate such a debate. I also ask him to facilitate a debate, before the budget, on equality of pay for teachers across the profession.

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