06 March 2007

Transport

Irish Ferries

Ciarán Cuffe asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment when he will publish legislation which will make a repeat of what happened in the Irish Ferries' redundancy deal illegal.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (Mr. Killeen)

The parties in the negotiations to T2016 recognised that the opening up of the Irish labour market arising from the decision to permit direct access by citizens of the new EU Member States has given rise to concerns about the possibility of the collective compulsory replacement of workers by lower paid workers from these States or elsewhere, either directly or through the use of other replacement workers within the jurisdiction.

Under Section 18 of the Agreement, there is provision for a Redundancy Panel, which can request the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment to refer certain compulsory collective redundancies to the Labour Court for an Opinion as to whether or not they are genuine redundancies. If they are not, the Minister can refuse to pay the statutory redundancy rebate to the employer, with the employees being entitled to take an Unfair Dismissals case, with enhanced compensation under an amendment to Unfair Dismissals legislation.

The text of The Protection of Employment (Exceptional Collective Redundancies and Related Matters) Bill 2007 has been finalised and it will be published as soon as possible.

As discussions with the social partners are not yet concluded it is unlikely that the Heads of an Employment Agency Regulation Bill can be considered by the Government before end-March. The Bill will then be drafted as quickly as possible.