Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Question 28: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the stakeholders with whom he met while consulting on the proposed changes to the joint labour committees; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20127/11]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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On 24 May last, the Government decided to publish the Report of the Independent Review of Employment Regulation Orders and Registered Employment Agreement Wage Setting Mechanisms.

The Report's overall finding is that the basic framework of the current JLC/REA regulatory system requires radical overhaul so as to make it fairer and more responsive to changing economic circumstances and labour market conditions.

To coincide with the publication of the report, I immediately requested meetings with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, IBEC and the Construction Industry Federation to hear those organisations' views on the Report and to outline my proposals to address the report's recommendations and other issues raised in the report. Those meetings took place in early June.

I also held discussions with other employer interests in the sectors covered by statutory wage fixing mechanisms, including Hairdressing and the Hospitality and Retail sectors. Officials from my Department have held discussions with employer representatives in the Security and Agriculture sectors, as well as TASC, the independent think-tank dedicated to economic equality issues. In accordance with the terms of the EU/IMF programme, discussions have also taken place with representatives of the troika.

These discussions enabled me to hear at first hand the views of the main representative bodies and stakeholders on how a meaningful and overdue reform might be implemented in these wage-setting mechanisms, which would strike a balance between protection of the rights of vulnerable workers and ensuring businesses could weather the difficult economic conditions and open up new job opportunities.

As the Deputy knows, this Government has been determined to protect vulnerable workers by restoring the National Minimum Wage and by retaining the JLC mechanism but in a substantially reformed framework. The recent High Court judgment has made reform imperative and urgent. The Government is determined to proceed with urgency to undertake a substantial reform of the current JLC / REA regulatory system. This work will simultaneously address the weakness identified by the High Court judgment and the issues raised by the independent Report and by the discussions with the various stakeholders.

The drafting of the necessary legislation will be given the highest priority. My intention is that the new legislation will be introduced to the Dáil very early in the next term, with prioritised enactment to follow thereafter.