Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I move:

That Seanad Éireann approves the following Order in draft: Sectoral Employment Order (Construction Sector) 2023, a copy of which has been laid in draft form before Seanad Éireann on 5th April, 2023.”

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh Chathaoirleach Maher agus na daoine as Meiriceá. I am delighted to welcome my old friend Moegie and his guests from the US to the Gallery. There is much to be discussed about Irish-US relations.

I am pleased to present to the Seanad a draft sectoral employment order, SEO, for the construction sector. The draft order that was before the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment yesterday, attended by Senators Crowe and Ahearn, amends the previous SEO made in 2021, which in turn amended the SEO made in 2019 by confirming new minimum rates of pay, pension and sick pay entitlements for workers in the construction sector. This order, approved by the committee yesterday, is the fourth of its kind to be made.

A sectoral employment order is a statutory minimum wage-setting mechanism in a given economic sector. Essentially, an SEO is a collective bargaining mechanism which, once the statutory thresholds have been met, gives the Labour Court as a neutral decision maker the power to examine an application for a SEO in any given economic sector. As part of this examination, the Labour Court must explore all the policy considerations set out in the Industrial Relations Act 2015 by affording all interested parties an opportunity to engage with the proposals and have an opportunity to be heard. Once the Labour Court has complied with this statutory process set out in the 2015 Act, it has the power to make a recommendation for an SEO to me. The recommendations must be accompanied by a report which sets out the process and matters that the Labour Court considered in reaching its recommendation. The purpose of this report is to assist the Minister in satisfying himself or herself that the Labour Court has complied with its statutory functions as required by the Act.

The role of the Minister in this process is limited. Pursuant to the 2015 Act, the Minister has the power to either accept or reject the recommendation as presented. In this regard, the Minister is compelled to accept the recommendation if he or she agrees, based on the statutory report that the Labour Court has prepared, that the court has complied with the statutory process. If the Minister is not satisfied that the Labour Court has complied with its duties as set out in the Act, he or she must return the proposals to the court setting out his or her reasons for not accepting the recommendations. The Minister does not have any power to engage with the substantive recommendation on the SEO itself. Accordingly, I can confirm to the Seanad that I have considered this draft recommendation in line with the terms of the 2015 Act, relying on the statutory report outlining the Labour Court's deliberative process. Having done so, I am satisfied that the Labour Court has complied with its statutory role. Accordingly, my Department notified the Labour Court on 17 April 2023 that I have accepted the recommendation and that I would be referring the matter to the Houses of Oireachtas as required by the Act for their consideration.Furthermore, as required, a draft order was laid before the Houses on 5 April 2023. The 2015 Act also sets out that the Houses of the Oireachtas may only accept or reject the draft order as it is; it does not permit any alterations or amendments to it. Once the resolution approving the draft order has passed, I will sign a statutory instrument giving effect to this decision. Should the Houses reject or fail to approve the draft order, the proposal for the SEO falls.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I join the Cathaoirleach in welcoming our public representative colleagues from Washington County, Wisconsin. Speaker Robin Vos is one of the national co-chairs of the American Irish State Legislators Caucus. He is a speaker of the House in Wisconsin. Next time you see him, you might remind him his grandmother got a letter from former US President John F. Kennedy on 17 March 1963 on her 100th birthday. Speaker Vos is most welcome today. I am aware that he participated in a tree-planting ceremony in Galway to mark the 20th anniversary of the relationship with County Galway. We hope the delegates enjoy their time in Galway. I know they will and that they will spend as much time as they can on Shop Street, and also as much money as they can.

I also welcome to the Chamber our guests from Scoil Naomh Treasa National School, Bellewstown. I thank them very much for coming. We hope they will enjoy their time in the Seanad and all come back as Senators one day. Possibly there will be a few taoisigh among them. They will have to put their names on the ballot paper and they should make sure they register to vote. They may vote for whomever they want; I do not want to lobby.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I, too, welcome the pupils from the school and the distinguished guests from Wisconsin. They are in very good company with Councillor Michael "Moegie" Maher. They will certainly enjoy their stay. Regardless of how long they stay in Galway, it will definitely be memorable with Moegie – that is for sure. I wish them well on their trip.

This is Deputy Richmond's first time in the Seanad as Minister of State, at least while I have been present. I officially congratulate him on his new role as Minister of State in the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment and look forward to working with him.

As the Minister of State said in his contribution, we spoke about this matter at the committee meeting yesterday along with Senator Crowe. We had a good, detailed discussion. The measure under discussion is essentially good news for workers in the sector. It is protecting their pay – a minimum rate of pay. Many subjects were mentioned yesterday. I stated we have to remember the rate of pay is a minimum rate. Anyone with an understanding of the construction sector will know that many working in it at the moment are paid at a rate far higher than the one the Minister of State is introducing. For several reasons, a construction job is a high-skilled job. There is difficulty in getting employment in the sector at the moment, so many in construction have to pay high wages to get and retain good people. As in all sectors, there is competition between companies to get good staff. From my experience, the construction sector is not like other areas of the workforce, including the hospitality sector, where workers can be exploited more.

This order is about protecting workers' rights. I stated yesterday that the current Government has made very many changes in recent years. The Minister of State's Department has made many changes to protect workers' rights, whether in respect of sick pay legislation, which the committee discussed in great detail, a new public holiday, requesting remote working, redundancy during the pandemic and better protections for workers. Everything we are trying to do and everything the former Minister, now the Taoiseach, tried to do was to improve workers' rights.

This is good news today and it is very welcome. We support it on this side of the House. I thank the Minister of State for bringing the matter to the House.

Michael McDowell (Independent)
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When this matter was originally being considered for approval in this House, it was to be discussed without debate. I apologise because I was partly responsible for asking for the matter to be debated. The reason was that I believe there are wider issues at stake. I agree completely with Senator Ahearn in that the rates in question are not surprising and probably below the market level in many instances. Therefore, the economic effect of this order is probably likely to be minimal. The point I want to raise is a slightly wider one, however.

Last week I went for a walk from my house in Ranelagh to Grand Canal Basin and saw the immense amount of work being done on office developments. Huge holes are being dug in the ground and there are huge girder frameworks being put up. I wondered whether, between that work and the infrastructural work contemplated by the Government, we have major supply constraints related to skilled building workers that will collectively impede the State's capacity to build the amount of housing the Taoiseach has mentioned, namely a quarter of a million houses, which is the deficit. The fundamental point concerns what we can do. I am aware the Government has announced the temporary relaxation of development levies and subsidies and grants for home construction in certain areas. However, we have to face up to the fact that, when digging to build a metro – I still hope it will not go ahead – and when all such things happen, we will need a large number of construction workers, skilled artisans and their like to meet society's construction needs. Our population has risen from 3.9 million to 5.1 million and we have elaborate plans for social expenditure.

The Georgian ambassador became an almost-semipermanent fixture in this House a few weeks ago when we were talking about Georgian migration and people coming here from Georgia without documentation. He and I had a very useful discussion in which he said Ireland is offering construction workers, if they can get going in Ireland, five to ten times as much as they would earn in Georgia. Two points occurred to me in this regard. Since I believe the ambassador was right in saying we need the workers, we need pathways for them to meet our needs. There was a time – it is probably unfashionable to mention it – when workers from Turkey, which obviously now has its own construction needs, and companies like Gama were filling in the gap in our capacity to meet our domestic construction employment needs. The Government will have to consider new migration policies to facilitate the migration into Ireland of construction workers. It will also have to examine the role of those who are coming to Ireland as economic migrants, properly or improperly, and ask whether they should not be allowed to work to fulfil our needs.I was a little bit surprised that this order was to set minimum levels at the levels they were because I thought that if you were a Dublin city centre building contractor, you would be very lucky to get people to work for you at these rates. I fully accept they are not intended to be a ceiling but a floor. There is a wider issue about the promises politicians are making - I am not making a party political point - about 250,000 extra homes, about underground railways, and about projects anyone might wish to name, and how these can be achieved in the context of a complete undersupply of employee capacity in the construction sector. We have to think slightly outside the box again to work out how migrant labour is needed to fulfil what are very urgent needs in our society. That is why I sought this debate.

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I very much appreciate Senator McDowell giving me this opportunity to address some of the points he has raised in a wider sense but more particularly in respect of this SEO which is a fundamentally good thing. It should be remembered that these are minimum rates but perhaps not for today but for when we have the economic situation we might perhaps have in the future, given the comments from the Minister, Deputy McGrath, about potential future tax returns. The wonderful surplus we can expect to have to hand this year will not be there forever and we must be awake and alert to potential shifting economic times and ensuring that floor is there for people working in construction.

I acknowledge the submissions referred to by Senator Crowe, and as I outlined to Deputy O’Reilly yesterday, I am more than happy to engage and listen to anything in respect of enhanced resources or powers for WRC inspectors in this space. It is a discussion we certainly can have and I look forward to her and the Senator bringing forward proposals on that. Senator Crowe rightly cited specifically the issue of the ineligible list and the critical skills occupations list, which was at the crux of the points made by Senator McDowell. When the Senator started talking about Turkish workers, I thought that he was going a little bit further back in time to West Germany and the wonderful experience it had with regard to Turkish migration, and not just in respect of rebuilding its country after the Second World War. We need only look at the Bayern Munich or German football teams to see that the societal impact has been truly great also. Even as an Arsenal fan, I was very disappointed with how Mesut Özil turned out.

Looking more specifically at workers in the construction industry, Senator McDowell is perfectly right in that we do not have enough workers in that industry and we are doing a number of things to increase that. I will lay down these matters quickly before addressing the substantive part of the Senator’s point.

First and foremost, in the medium term it is about getting people into apprenticeships and to get people through the CAO, as they are now able to do by choosing the opportunity to become an apprentice carpenter or block layer. We have seen some progress in that and a great deal more can be and is being done, led by the Minister, Deputy Harris.

Something I also find very important within that is the fact that only 9% of our construction workforce is female, and that is not good enough. When I look at the work being done in Dublin City Council, in particular, to encourage women, but especially early school leavers, into council apprenticeships in trades such as carpentry, electricians and every other sort, that is something that offers great potential.

The other thing mentioned by Senator Ahearn yesterday and which was the subject of a Commencement matter today is reaching out to those who are long-term unemployed, that 4.2%. That is very hard to do and I believe Senator McDowell was a Minister on the most recent occasion we had full employment. He went to great lengths in his own Ministry to work with colleagues to try to maximise that. It is difficult but it is the right thing to do. I fundamentally believe we need many more workers to come into this country, not just in the construction sector but in the healthcare and ICT sectors, to continue to be able to attract the foreign direct investment, FDI, to support our indigenous businesses and, crucially, to build the homes we need so badly. There are also the large-scale infrastructural projects, including the MetroLink, which I certainly hope will be built. There can be some room to agree to disagree on this. We need these workers.

In the past year 70,000 workers came to this country; 40,000 through the work permit system and 30,000 from within the European Union. Many more people came to this country in the past year than left it, despite some of the wild accusations of some members of the Opposition in the Dáil. Equally, more Irish people came home from abroad in the past year than emigrated. That is often something that is left from discussion when it is said people have scattered to the four winds or that they are all going to Sydney, Melbourne, Canada or wherever it is. People choose to emigrate, and some have to, but unlike when I and Senator Ahearn left college, they do not have to emigrate for employment reasons.

The jobs are there in such a way that I fundamentally agree with both Senator McDowell and Senator Crowe that we need to look at the critical skills occupations list. That is ongoing work and we will have the next stage of that review in August. I welcome specific submissions identifying vocations on the ineligible list and moving them to the considered list and on to the eligible list. I would genuinely appreciate the Senators' engagement and intervention on that point because it strengthens the case. I have been saying that to a number of Members of the Oireachtas in recent days. Both Deputies Stanton and Creed have cited the issue of car mechanics to me, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae has mentioned refrigeration mechanics, and this issue goes into every sector.

Key to this, and again Senator McDowell is perfectly correct on this, and I very much appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this debate and largely to agree with him, is construction and, looking at the profile of this sector, we see, understandably, a great focus on office construction. However, we see how the workplace is changing with the introduction of remote working, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. We will, therefore, be seeing many of those involved in the industry, and we are seeing the market at work in this regard, opting to transfer from commercial development into residential development as they see where the market demand is as well as the societal need. Many of those are in the Grand Canal Basin or dotted out in the wider Dublin 2 and Dublin 4 areas.

I very much appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this debate, to discuss this sectoral employment order with Senators, and to very much emphasise how grateful I am to the Labour Court for doing this work. To have the full buy-in from employees and employers is no mean feat. It is something which is good for the construction sector and for its future but, crucially, it is vital to both our society and economy.