Thank you, Sir, for allowing me and my colleagues to raise his matter on the Adjournment. May I seek your permission to substitute the name of Deputy Dan Wallance for Deputy Quill?
Adjournment Debate. - Readaptation Payments to Former Irish Steel Workers.
I am sure that is satisfactory and agreed.
The Minister will recall that in answering parliamentary questions earlier this year he indicated that the Government had contributed to the readaptation programme at Irish Steel. Therefore, he will readily appreciate our surprise when we showed the "blacks" of the Official Report to former workers of Irish Steel who informed us that what the Minister had stated here was inaccurate, was not factual and that the Government had not contributed to the overall retraining programme.
They furnished us with a copy of Labour Court Recommendation 14506 clearly demonstrating that the redundancy package recommended by the Labour Court was to be paid by the company without any financial involvement by the Government.
I request the Minister to clarify what he said at Question Time when this issue was raised. Will he state whether what he told this House on that occasion was factual because former workers of Irish Steel are extremely annoyed and drew our attention to subparagraph (d) of that recommendation which reads:
The company emphasised the dire financial position of the business, the accumulated losses and the fact that whatever financial injection it received would have to sustain it until such time as it achieved full viability. This again highlights the court's awareness that the redundancy would be financed by no party other than the company.
I draw the Minister's attention to Article 3 of the Treaty Special Payment where it is clearly stated that the granting of ECSC aid shall be subject to the payment of a special contribution by the member state of an amount at least equivalent to that aid.
I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government will make an equal payment available to these former workers, which is their entitlement under Article 3 to which I just referred, which it has failed to do to date. Given the Labour Court recommendation, the Minister should seriously reconsider his position and ensure that this money is made available.
A decision was taken in 1985 to pay each worker of Irish Steel made redundant a total of £3,740, comprising a lump sum of £1,400 with £30 per month over the following 18 months. In today's money that would amount to approximately £9,000, whereas the other day 3,000 ECUs were offered to those workers, in today's terms, equivalent to some £2,400. The Minister will readily see there is a large discrepancy between the amount offered in 1985 and that offered most recently. Therefore, it is incumbent on the Government to honour the implied commitment given to the Labour Court when the redundancy agreements were drawn up, which was that the Government would provide matching funding. Did the Minister intend to get other funds under Articles 4 and 6 of the ECSC Treaty? This matter was brought to the attention of the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment, Deputy Rabbitte, on Wednesday, 31 July 1996 at a meeting with the delegation representing the Irish Steel beneficiaries. However, no reply was received.
These workers have been badly treated and it is time the Government rectified this. They should be given similar treatment to that meted out to them in 1985. I ask the Minister to take these points into account in his reply.
I thank Deputy Batt O'Keeffe for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Like my colleagues, I make a strong appeal to the Minister to clarify the situation.
The former workers at Irish Steel are annoyed because they are convinced the Minister and this Government have not taken the initiative to finalise this matter. They are due financial assistance but because of the Minister's inactivity the matter has not been clarified. Recently I met the representatives of the former workers who are annoyed at the Government's attitude. They believe that the financial assistance they received from the EU was as a result of their own initiative and that little help was received from the Government. They also make the point that they would have been £900 better off under the 1985 agreement than they are under the agreement they entered into.
I am sure the Minister agrees this is an unsatisfactory situation. After the trauma of losing their jobs, these people should not have to pursue the Government for financial assistance to which they believe they are entitled. The Government did not put up matching funds. I ask the Minister to clarify the situation so that this traumatic chapter in the life of these Irish Steel workers can be finally closed.
I reaffirm that the replies I gave in the Dáil on the previous occasion were factual. In 1985 the precedent was established that matching funds would be provided on the basis of extra statutory redundancy. Equally, the payments which can be made by the EU have an overall ceiling of £3,000 ECU, and that is the sum being paid in this event. When we originally approached the EU seeking funds to assist these workers, it was only willing to pay a smaller sum. We have secured, through negotiation with the European Commission, a significant improvement in the moneys available. Far from being inactive, as the Deputies have suggested, we have been particularly active in pursuing this case and the outcome, in terms of the numbers and the level of aid, is a significant improvement on what was originally available.
This new package represents a significant improvement in terms of the number of eligible workers, the amount of aid available and the payment conditions. Re-adaptation aid will now be available for 209 former workers made redundant in 1994, 1995 and early 1996 as a result of the restructuring. The total funding available from the Commission will be 627,000 ECU and this figure incorporates the original 376,000 ECU approved by the Commission in December 1995. The re-adaptation aid, as I indicated, will result in payments of 3,000 ECU per worker which is the average maximum aid available under Article 56.2 of the ECSC Treaty for workers made redundant.
What about the matching funds from Government?
I have already answered that question. The Deputy was not listening to me.
The Minister did not. The Labour Court clearly states that the company paid it.
I indicated that the precedent was crystal clear in that the matching funding provided by the State is and was on previous occasions the extra statutory redundancy.
The company paid the redundancy, not the Government.
Let us hear the Minister without interruption.
In the agreement with ISPAT International the Government provided substantial sums towards meeting the extra statutory redundancy payments. That has been accepted by the Commission under the terms of the agreement.
That money was outside the Labour Court's recommendations.
Article 56.2 of the ECSC Treaty is crystal clear as to how this is applied. The Commission has recognised that the extra statutory redundancy payments, which were made on this occasion in the same way as they were made in 1985, are the basis for matching funding. We are applying the precedent that was applied in the previous case.
The workers are worse off by approximately £900.
The extra statutory redundancy payments received by the workers constitute the matching funding and this has been accepted by the Commission.
That was a Labour Court decision.
On the previous occasion that re-adaptation aid was paid to former Irish Steel workers in 1985, the extra statutory redundancy payments received by those workers also constituted the matching funding.
The Dáil adjourned at 11.40 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 19 December 1996.