Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I put on record Sinn Féin's support for this Bill and the excellent work Senator Higgins has done on it. The importance of guidance can be seen in the way that procurement does not work at the moment. I will give the Minister of State a concrete example. It involves a multinational company that operates in one of our hospitals in Galway and that supplies canteen staff. It pays those staff the minimum wage. It paid the minimum wage during the past couple of horrendous years of Covid. Any worker who tried to organise a trade union was not given work the following week. How can procurement be seen to be working correctly when that type of abuse is taking place? Unfortunately, it is all too commonplace. The best way to correct that is by looking at how we do procurement differently. It can be truly transformative. The guidance procedures spoken about by Senator Higgins in terms of the environment and social and human rights should be enough without being overly prescriptive to ensure a better outcome not just for our services and the patients who receive them in hospital but for the workers themselves.

I put Sinn Féin's full support behind this Bill. I recognise and welcome the fact that the Government is allowing it to go through this evening.