Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is nice to see the Minister of State and he is very welcome. On behalf of Sinn Féin, I welcome the motion on sick pay, which will have our full support. I also welcome the speeches made by my colleagues in the Labour Party.

Where do I begin with sick pay? I will begin with my own experience of working as a trade union official with red meat workers. What is not often said, and it needs to be said, is that our red meat industry is rife with exploitation. We are not talking about a few bad apples. We are talking about an industry that is rife with exploitation.When I worked with those workers, I could see first-hand the back-breaking work they undertook and the repetitive strain injuries they regularly got, but of course they had to work because there was no sick pay. As we heard from one of our colleagues, 90% of them do not have sick pay. What does it tell us about a massively profitable industry when it decides that 90% of its workers are not worthy of sick pay, even given the back-breaking savage workload these workers undertake? It is not a coincidence, of course, that the vast majority of these workers are foreign nationals and somehow it is almost that they are out of sight so, therefore, they are out of mind. It is a disgraceful industry and I want to put that on the record of the House. We have heard too many times about our wonderful exports. Talk to the people who work in those factories. Examine what they have to put up with and remember that when we tried to organise them in SIPTU, they were fired, not once, not twice but every time in every factory. This is the reality of our red meat industry. Is it not shocking that one of the most profitable industries in the country denies sick pay to people?

I want to give a second example, which is private nursing homes. I did a lot of work with private nursing home workers, and when we look at their contracts of employment they are quite shocking. I have one here. They are expected to work all hours, day and night, including weekends, for a flat rate of pay. There is no additional rate of pay for weekends. I am not speaking about one bad example, I am speaking about one of the industry leaders. This is the standard in these private for-profit nursing homes. Again, I put it to the Minister of State that there is no sick pay in this sector. Think about that. In a sector such as this they work with vulnerable elderly people. We know all too well from Covid how vulnerable these workers are, but there is nothing to be said for it.

The question I would ask is how we got here. How is it we are so out of sync with the rest of Europe? Just looking at some of the schemes throughout Europe, in Germany employers must pay a sick worker's full wage for up to six weeks and in France, sick workers are paid for 60 to 90 days, with 90% for the first 30 days. In Finland, legislation compels the employer to pay nine days of full salary, but through collective agreements workers usually receive sick pay for up to one month and other workers and civil servants receive sick pay for even more than three months. What is it about the Irish workforce that successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments, successive conservative governments, never felt it was worth doing something in this sector? I will address Senator Currie's point. We can go back as far as 2012 to see Sinn Féin Private Members' business on this. We have been consistent on this issue and the need to legislate on it.

It is clear that it is about class politics. It is about the people in these factories not coming into the minds of either of the conservative parties. They never have done. Let us look at the key calls the Labour Party has made. The first is to expedite consultation with trade unions and business representatives to introduce urgently a statutory right to paid sick leave for all employees. Who could possibly disagree with this line? The motion also calls for the provision of a series of targeted and easy-to-access supports to employers who can demonstrate an inability to pay sick leave during the course of the pandemic. It is very important that we put in place supports for small and medium-sized businesses in particular. It also calls for amendment of the Parental Leave Act 1998. There was no need for this really weakly worded, poor Government amendment. I was going to use bad language there but I did not. There is no need for it. Why can the Government not agree with these three simple calls? I would like the Minister of State to respond to this.

Look at the Government's amendment. It calls for consideration of reforms and improvements to Ireland's statutory sick pay laws. We do not have any statutory sick pay laws. What we did have at the beginning of 2014 was a move from three days to six days before workers could access sick pay. That is the Fine Gael record. Unfortunately, it was Joan Burton in the chair at the time. I welcome the fact there is broad progressive agreement on this point and on pursuing it. We have to do better for working people. My worry is exactly what Senator Wall referenced earlier. I am not convinced, and in fact looking at the amendment I am less convinced than ever, that the Government has any real intention to deal with this issue. There is no reason the Government could not have supported the three key points in the Labour Party's motion and given us real encouragement that this huge gap in workers' rights will be addressed sooner rather than later, but it has not happened.

There are so many references here. The Council of Europe has called us out on our lack of sick pay. The European Social Charter condemned the UK, which actually has some degree of sick pay, as being manifestly inadequate and not in conformity. Where does that leave us? We have absolutely nothing.

I am disappointed because the Minister of State had an opportunity to show goodwill and real intent but instead he has come up with this weakly worded, vague, nondescript nonsense. I challenge the Government representatives because word will go out, and there is no doubt about it, that a simple motion such as this which deserves support has not received it and, instead, the Government has engaged in a kicking the can down the road episode. There is no need for a six-month period. The employers and unions could get this worked out in three months. That would have been a much more reasonable timeframe and we could have got real results for these workers, who have been abandoned not just through Covid but for years and decades before this. We can and must do better. I hope the Minister of State can give us something more positive than this appallingly weak amendment.