Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I thank the Minister for being here to consider this legislation which seeks to protect retail workers in their workspace. More than 300,000 people work in retail in every town, village and city in the country. They provide a vital front-line service in all our communities. What this Bill seeks to do is protect them from attack, be it verbal or physical, in their workspace. Before I speak about the Bill itself, I want to acknowledge my former Seanad colleague Deputy Malcolm Byrne, who introduced a similar Bill in the previous Seanad. I also acknowledge the Minister of State and Chief Whip, Deputy Mary Butler, who herself was a retailer prior to her political career. Dealing with the public in the retail space, she progressed into politics. The Minister for Justice will be aware that in the negotiations on the programme for Government, the Minister of State was one of the strong advocates and champions of ensuring it would contain strong commitments to increase safety in the retail space and specifically address retail crime. I thank my Fianna Fáil colleagues Senators Comyn and Rabbitte, who are here, and the Fianna Fáil Group in general for supporting this Private Members' Bill. We have a lot of competition regarding our Bills but the fact that this is our first in this Seanad term indicates the strength of support from the Fianna Fáil Group in the Seanad for addressing this issue.

I also thank RGDATA, which nominated me to contest the Seanad election. It represents more than 3,000 independent, Irish-owned food retailers, including the Spars and Centras. Local shops throughout the country are represented by it. It has been campaigning on the issue of retail crime for quite some time. It undertook a survey of its members and the results confirmed for it what it had been hearing anecdotally. For some, it is somewhat startling to hear that 93% of the RGDATA members surveyed had been victims of shoplifting. More than 25% of its members had been subjected to a violent robbery, and that could include the use of weapons, including knives and guns. Forty percent of RGDATA's members have been subjected to fraudulent activity. These are the headline statistics but we should consider what they mean in real terms for those working in retail. It is a matter of the human experience of going to work to serve other people to provide them with what are largely essential services only to be faced sometimes with what is casual, mindless rudeness and aggression but also what can be sexist commentary and attacks, racist attacks, discriminatory and aggressive language, physical abuse and assault. It takes a real toll on people, including on their daily lives. Some retailers have said it is not just an attack on their livelihoods but also on their lives.

Some independent retailers own their shops and have taken on the liability associated with providing a service in the community. They have taken on the financial risk of buying in stock to provide it to their customers, and they have also taken on the financial and economic responsibility of employing staff. For them, the welfare and safety of their staff are paramount. Ultimately, they find that recruiting and retaining staff, despite increases to the minimum wage and pay, are increasingly difficult. It is a challenge for the employers, including the retailers, but also for all of us because we all need a pint of milk, slice of bread, mobile phone top-up or meter card top-up. If the shops are not available, it will diminish each and every one of our communities.

When things started to open up during the Covid pandemic, the people who were first to get back into action and start to serve us all after the first responders and emergency services were the retailers. They were the ones who opened their shops, put up the plastic screens and wore the masks, and they have taken the brunt of it.I have seen it in my community in Dublin Central in areas such as Cabra, Dorset Street and Phibsborough, and right across the community. On main streets such as Henry Street and Mary Street, I have seen retailers close their doors. The big indicator for me a couple of years ago on this issue was the fact that retailers were not only struggling to hire staff and then retain those staff and customers, but they also had to take on the extra cost, an estimated €40,000 per year per retailer in Ireland, to hire security staff. Those security staff wore body cameras before gardaí did. That is an indication of where things had got to in the retail space. It is, therefore, a really serious issue.

I thank the Minister for being here and giving consideration to this Bill. I hope all of the House will support the Bill because it is something on which there is unanimity. I believe we all value our retailers. We value not only the service they provide, but the dimension they bring to our community and society in creating a safe place where we can all go to have human interaction. It should be a place that we, as a society, value. We should send out a strong indication that we want to protect retail workers and that any attack on retail workers is completely unacceptable.