Rose Conway-Walsh backs Bill but criticises delay on workers' rights

Minister, the legislation proposed by you today, if enacted, will bring Ireland in step with an EU directive which should have been transposed into domestic law in 1983. While I welcome the fact that, better late than never, you are attempting to provide these protections to Irish workers, I cannot help but wonder how many more workers could have been protected if this legislation had been bought in in the 80s, as it should have been. I know that the Government will say that workers who believe that they may have benefited from this legislation can still make claims, but realistically there has been a lot of life saved since 1983, and the Government will know that the proportion of people who might have had an unpaid wage claim from 1985, we will say, will be vastly higher than the amount who seek redress now in the year of 2025. The Protection of Employees, Employers Insolvency Amendment Bill 2025 does deliver several important changes. The expansion of access to the insolvency payment scheme to include employees of employers who cease trading without formally winding up their business is significant and must be welcomed. I am happy to note that the Bill will also provide a new statutory process for employees in this situation to apply to have their employer deemed insolvent and to recover their outstanding monies from the insolvency payment scheme. I know that extensive pre-legislative scrutiny has been undertaken by the previous Enterprise Committee and I want to acknowledge the work of my own colleague Louise O'Reilly for the diligent work that she has done on this Bill to date. I do have some remaining concerns regarding the Bill. It is around the ease of access for people who may wish to make a claim. Will it be the case that a worker will need legal representation or is it the intention that once it is done it will be easy and accessible? Will it work through a website? How is it envisaged? Employment issues by their nature can be intricate and complicated and very individualised. The last thing we want is for people who may have an entitlement looking at the process thinking they would rather not because it is too difficult to engage with. This should be something that a person can make their way through themselves without the cost of legal representation which would be a chill factor for many workers as you would appreciate. The more easily accessible and the plainer the language is the better. There must also be a communications and media strategy that is essential as we want people to be able to access it. And for historical cases it must be absolutely clear that people know that even for informal insolvencies that happened as far back as the 80s they can still make a claim. My party is supporting the Bill to pass second stage but I want the Committee to look at the media strategy around this piece of legislation because if people are not aware of the entitlement then they might as well not have it. I also hope that the Committee will examine the Bill in light of the rights and entitlements that a worker may have had by way of a collective agreement or enhanced redundancy or does this cover only the statutory entitlements? I want to touch on the costings for the implementation of this legislation. I am aware that the Department has allocated almost £15 million for the historical element of the piece. I know that last year when the pre-ledge scrutiny was ongoing some of the Department officials were estimating up to 5,000 historical applications. So on that reckoning it seems that the Department are thinking that the average award would be in the ballpark of €3,000. This is a small sum of money for the government but for the individual it would mean a lot. I have no doubt. So again it goes back to the ease of application which should be commensurate with the level of the award being allocated. I also want the Committee to look at how these historical cases would be assessed and monitored. Is there any way aside from the advertising campaign that historical applications can be encouraged to ensure all of those eligible are able to access the fund? In the case where a worker has died in the 42 years since 1983, is there a possibility for a spouse or other relative to make a claim on their behalf? I wonder if the Department has considered that. These are the intricacies that we must be able to stand over and that you Minister must give attention to. The Employers Insolvency Bill is a welcome piece of legislation and I commend the Minister for bringing it this far indeed. However, Minister, I think we have a way to go and introducing a scheme which should have been introduced years ago does not get the Government off the hook for its failure to deliver on workers' rights. Sinn Féin has long stood with workers in these struggles. We believe that legislation must prioritise workers' rights, especially their collective redundancy agreements. Those entitlements always need to be prioritised, alongside wages or statutory redundancy payments. The Government has consistently failed to deliver on its promise to improve workers' rights and living standards. Despite your commitments to increase statutory sick pay to raise the minimum wage level and eliminate discriminatory pay practices, these promises, many of them still remain unfulfilled. The Government promised to increase statutory sick pay from five days to seven days in 2025 and to 10 days from 2016. However, they have postponed this increase, leaving over one million private sector workers without paid sick leave. This delay worsens financial and health hardships for workers and families. When we are in the middle of a cost-to-living crisis, Minister, I absolutely do not see it as a contest between employers and businesses and workers. The biggest asset of any and the greatest asset of any business is its workers and we must ensure that we have workforces that are respected and that their rights are upheld just in the same way as others are. That is why collective bargaining is so important. Similarly, the pledge to move forward on a living wage has been stalled. While most EU countries increased their minimum wage significantly last year, Ireland's minimum wage remains well below the EU averages. This contributes to Ireland's high rate of low pay, with 20 per cent of workers earning below a fair living standard. The Government's reluctance to accelerate wage increases put further pressure on low paid workers and low paid workers amid the rising living costs. Promises to end discriminatory sub-minimum youth pay rates and to improve migrant workers' wages have also been broken and delayed. The minimum wage for migrant workers and general employment permits is still below market levels and wage increases have been postponed. Additionally, the Government has delayed the raising of the employers' PRSI threshold, which would help to reduce the tax burden on businesses and support workers. Many other social commitments, such as pension reforms, hikes and child benefit and scrapping means tests for carers, have been shelved or quietly rolled back on. The auto-enrolment pension scheme, which Sinn Féin supports, remains poorly managed, risking increased exposure to market volatility and privatisation. The Government claims economic uncertainty justifies these delays. However, a Red Sea poll shows that 56 per cent of the public opposes these backtracks, with only 24 per cent supporting the Government's stance. Voters who supported Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are particularly opposed, highlighting a disconnect between Government actions and public expectations. The failure to honour promises has real consequences. It leaves workers more vulnerable, increases poverty and deepens inequality. Instead of supporting fair wages and social protections, the Government is prioritising short-term economic narratives that give handouts to the wealthy and big businesses. I am calling again on the Government to honour its election promises and to stop paying lip service to workers in this State. Minister, I have to say that the workers, and the workers that we are seeking to protect here, and other workers, it is absolutely vital to recognise that they are living in a real cost-of-living crisis. The cost of living extends to people trying to be able to afford their groceries, trying to pay for their energy bills. We know that there are almost half a million people behind with their energy bills as we are. It is absolutely distressing to see that the Government at this stage have ruled out any cost-of-living package in the Budget. I would ask you to go back to the Minister for Finance and just to look at where people are at in terms of the struggles that families have right here and right now to be able to afford to live, to be able to afford to have any quality of living. I always make the point that workers have never, ever worked so hard, and yet they have never struggled so much in just trying to make ends meet. So everything connects with everything else, and for employers to have a fairness, to have people who are properly paid for the work that they do, and to look at things like increasing productivity. You increase that by lifelong learning, by investment in education, by investment in training, all of those things. But the first thing that we examine must not always be to cut back from wages. I hear it in all kinds of discussions, whether it be around water infrastructure or whatever else, to see how much more you can get out of people's pockets. This surely has to be about putting some money back into workers' pockets and to people's pockets, so that the contribution that they are making to society is truly valued. Go raibh maga. Thank you, Deputy.