Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House. On 3 August the Minister of State promised to sign the employment regulation order, ERO, for the security sector into law by the end of the month. The Minister of State will know that this ERO is the culmination of three torturous years of trying to get a pay increase for security workers in this country. It was 2019 when they last saw a pay increase. These are the security workers who we lauded as vital front-line workers during the pandemic. They are the workers who maintained safety and order among people going into shops, construction sites, testing centres, vaccination clinics and anywhere else that people had to go to do their business and maintain a social distance. They work around the clock, 12 months of the year on a 24-hour basis of operations to keep people and places safe and secure.

However, when three employers went to court on 24 August to secure an ex parteinjunction to prevent the Minister of State from signing the workers' hard-won pay increase into law, it seems the Minister of State and this Government have sat on their hands. In the weeks since then the Government has done nothing to defend what the Minister of State knows is a legally and constitutionally sound wage agreement entered into between employers and employees in the security sector. The Government has not even made an appearance in the court, let alone mounting a defence on the matter. Is this what happens when a tiny number of employers choose to block and delay a collectively bargained wage agreement? Does the Government roll over and do nothing? All the while the Government professes to want to support workers but in private it is cowering to two or three employers.

I have no doubt that the Minister of State will tell me today he will be constrained because of legal proceedings but we need to tease that out for a moment because the judicial review challenging the constitutionality of the security ERO was initiated on 22 August. It is back for mention on 15 November. It is not back for a hearing on that date, only for mention, and with any luck it will be well into next year at the earliest before that judicial review takes place. All the while, security workers going out doing an honest day's work will have no pay increase for the foreseeable future. Is the Minister of State prepared to stand over that? These professionally trained and licensed workers will be earning just 35 cent more than the national minimum wage next January. That is outrageous and it is all the more outrageous that it is within the Minister of State's power to do something about this and he has done nothing.

This was supposed to be a good news story for workers. This is a story of trade unions and employers coming together to negotiate a collectively bargained wage agreement, which we have in the contract cleaning sector and which we are about to have in the childcare sector. We should have it in the security sector as well. However, we have a situation where the Government is doing nothing. I am speaking today and we had the workers in here on Tuesday expressing their frustration. Ian, Tony and Christy told us that they received 90 cent of a pay increase in the last 12 years, with nothing coming in the last three years. Now they have a wage deal on the table on behalf of the vast majority of employees in the sector, including 16,000 workers, and yet three small employers with a small number of workers are holding up this pay deal. There is an irony in that some of these companies have Government contracts for security in the Chief State Solicitor's office.

There are serious questions about what this Government will do about a pay agreement for low-paid workers and ensuring they get their pay increase as soon as possible. The Minister of State knows about the cost of living increases and this is about dignity for the workers and ensuring that collective bargaining works in this country. We need to hear answers from the Minister of State on what he will do about signing this pay agreement into law. In the first instance the Government must go into court to challenge that ex parteinjunction.