Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 28 May 1986

Vol. 113 No. 2

Request under Standing Order 29: Agricultural Officers' Dispute.

Mr. Ellis

I move under Standing Order No. 29 that the House be adjourned to debate the following matter: the present position of the dispute between agricultural officers and the Department of the Public Service which has disrupted all agricultural production within the country.

It is not with any great joy that any of us has witnessed the coming about of the impasse between the agricultural officers and the Department of the Public Service which has led to the strike that has been in force since Tuesday evening and also with regard to the escalation which is to take place as and from finishing time Thursday evening. It is only fiar that we should as Members of the House debate the matter. It caused some concern to one of my colleagues that his motion on the Adjournment had to be waived so that this matter might be taken, but I think he also recognises the extent of the damage that is being done to the agricultural industry at the moment.

If anybody looks at the farming scene they will see that farmers are going through their toughest time ever in the history of the State. They do not need any disruption of the method of disposal of their produce and I feel that we, as Members of the Seanad should ask the Minister for the Public Service and the Minister of State to go back and sit down and talk with the unions. We should appeal also to the union's leadership, in view of the crisis they have caused, to sit down with the Minister for the Public Service and try to resolve this matter. In doing so they would be showing both sides a gesture of good faith so far as the problem is concerned.

In order to maintain order the Minister has introduced members of the Army to carry out certain functions of departmental officers. I suppose this has escalated the strike and escalated the resolve of certain members of the union with regard to bringing the strike to a head. If we study it from the farmers' point of view, which I feel is the most important end at present, the loss to farmers will be quite considerable if this strike is allowed continue. The loss and damage to the meat processing industry will be considerable also. Many firms are committed to fulfilling contracts from Ireland on a weekly basis. If they do not fulfil their contracts they will be fulfilled from other sources and the net result will be long term losses to the farmers which they will not be in a position to recoup anywhere along the line and particularly not in the immediate future. The reputation of Irish suppliers of meat will be seriously affected right across the market places of Europe and especially in the UK. The consequential loss to farmers will be quite considerable. The graders who are the principal people who have gone on strike, carry out a very important function. They are the people who are responsible for the grading of livestock in our factories. They are also the people who are responsible for the stamping of carcases for intervention and for export to the UK, in the matter of subsidies such as variable premiums.

The Minister does not seem to be aware of the damage that will be done. Remember that once animals become over ready and over fat there is a consequential loss of enormous proportion to the farmers. Every animal that misses the grade is a loss with regard to beef of 10p a pound approximately to the farmer. It is also a loss with regard to premiums which they would receive on the meat leaving Ireland.

The same applies with regard to our lamb exports which will be affected as and from tomorrow evening. Remember that we are targeting our sheep and lamb production at the French market, a market which is very particular with regard to carcase quality and weight. There is no way farmers can stop animals from putting on weight and the net result will be that farmers will again be forced to take reduced prices for both their sheep and cattle which are going to be delayed from being slaughtered as a result of this strike. The Minister must have been aware of this strike for quite some time. He should not have allowed a breakdown in negotiations. More resolve and firmness on the part of the Minister for the Public Service would have resulted in this matter being ironed out round the bargaining table rather than being ironed out by means of a strike.

We should remember also that 12 per cent of Ireland's production is from agriculture. That production is now being seriously affected and the loss to the Irish economy will be considerable in the next few weeks. An amount of £2.5 million is involved in the dispute. We are all led to believe that there had been an agreement between the officers concerned and the Department of the Public Service but as in the case of the teachers, the Government were not in a position to agree to the arbitration findings, I ask the Minister of State here today to let us know if this is the exact position. It is very regrettable development from the farming point of view and from the agricultural officers' point of view. There is no joy for them in being on strike. There is no joy for them in preventing the people who provide their livelihood namely the farmers from selling produce. That is what is happening at present.

We in this House ask the Minister and the union officials to sit down immediately and set about trying to resolve the problems which they both face. It is important that the Minister of State should convey to the Minister the position as we see it. Remember that we are talking about our primary production, our prime employer, our prime source of foreign income. Foreign currencies come into Ireland by means of our agricultural production. We are also allowing a situation to arise in which the intervention system as proposed under the EC guidelines is being put into disarray. We all realise that there will be further disruptions as this strike continues. We should call on the Union of Professional and Technical Civil Servants and the Minister to sit down together today and resolve this problem. The nettle will have to be grasped irrespective of how long the dispute may run. But remember, those mainly involved, the Department and the civil servants, will not lose as much as the farmers of Ireland. We know that the officers involved will not be paid while they are on strike and perhaps this is the reason they are going to be allowed to go on strike. While the teachers were on strike, the Government saved a considerable amount of money. This House should ask the Minister of State to convey to the Minister — and I feel that it is regrettable that the Minister could not be present; perhaps he has other commitments in the House on Question Time — our concern and the concern of the people involved in agriculture about this dispute. It should not have been allowed by the Government to reach this impasse, because irrespective of what dispute takes place they all have to be settled. It is always better to settle them in time when very little damage may have been done with regard to relationships between the workers concerned and the Department because all these disputes leave their scars. The scars of this dispute will be felt by the hard-pressed Irish farmers. They will be the losers along with the economy. I again appeal to the Minister of State to implore the Minister, as soon as he returns to him after this debate, to take immediate action to resolve the problem.

Mr. Ferris

It is very difficult to say something on a matter like this that concerns you without making the possibility of a settlement more difficult. I want first of all to defend the democratic right of the trade union movement to strike as they see fit. That is a right that the trade union movement, over the past 70 years, have fought for and established. We must not remove that right because if we did we would have a dictatorship in this country. We have seen the results in other countries of the removal of trade union rights. This matter is of such paramount importance that I was one of the people in this House today who was in favour of having it discussed to highlight to the public and to the Minister and to the union our concern regarding the possible effects that a continuation of this strike could have. Anybody who has an interest in agricultural production, in the development of agriculture and the system under which we work within the Community, that is, the intervention system, realises that anything that jeopardises that could have serious consequences for the producers, for the workers in the industry who are not directly involved in the strike action and for the economy as a whole.

For that reason I support the call to the people who are in dispute with one another, that is the Minister for the Public Service and the union involved, to get together to sort out the problem. There is no problem in any area, trade union or otherwise, that cannot be settled and this like every other strike will have to be settled. What we are suggesting in this House is that it should be settled immediately or as quickly as possible having regard to the consequences that could arise if there is not a settlement or if there is an escalation of the dispute to other areas of agricultural processing. Production will go on. It is the processing we are concerned about.

One can argue about the rights or wrongs of intervention or a particular system for the payment of the producer for his labour. Many people within the Community are trying to remove the Common Agricultural Policy as we understand it. Public opinion throughout the world condemns a system that stores food indefinitely just to maintain a price structure, when half the world on the African Continent are starving. I suppose we should address that problem too. I hope that that kind of problem will be addressed because we can no longer go on producing something that is not required. However, the process of intervention is a mechanism to protect the producers particularly in Ireland to contend with their partners in the European Community who have been in the Community longer than us and whose production is more efficient than ours. As a result they do not depend as much as we do on the intervention system.

The amount of milk, milk powder and butter and indeed beef that is in intervention at present is of staggering proportions. The problem about putting this produce into intervention is first of all that we protect the price structure, second, that the farmers are compensated by the Common Agricultural Policy through FEOGA for the goods that are in intervention. The last and most important reason is that it protects the food from being ruined or poured down the drain or from other drastic measures that would have to be taken if this process of intervention was not there.

Therefore it is of paramount importance that a settlement should be reached in this dispute. In fairness to the Minister, he is on public record as saying as late as yesterday — and indeed I have had discussions with him following this matter being raised — that he is prepared, and has called on the unions to this effect, to sit down with him to iron out the problems that still exist. The Minister has said that all the avenues available to reconcile the differences have not been fully explored and if this is the case I would call on the union involved, as a very responsible union, to accede to the Minister's request to continue discussions until all avenues have been explored so that any outstanding problems between the Minister for the Public Service, the Government and the union themselves can be isolated and arrangements made to overcome them. The economic consequences of not so doing are too great for any of us to contemplate. It would not be helpful to take sides in this dispute but it would be appropriate that the parties in dispute sit down around a table so that everybody concerned can get back to work pending a resolution of the problem. Unfortunately the Army have had to be deployed to deal with the first two or three stages of the problem. That is the actual checking in of the stocks. However if the strike continues for a few days longer it means that the testing process in the intervention system cannot be carried out because this must be done by qualified people. For that reason I hope the matter is dispute will be settled.

I listened attentively this morning to one of the farming leaders who said the farmers might have to resort to means of protecting their livelihood. If these kinds of situations are allowed to drift an escalation could take place which would put many jobs in jeopardy. This is a matter of urgency. It is a matter of supreme importance from the economic point of view. The producers are extremely concerned because this is the month of the year in which they might have something to call their own. They have had such a desperate situation with last year's tragic weather, bad winter and late spring. There were signs of an improvement and a return to the type of milk production that we would be accustomed to in June but now this threat hangs over the end product of milk production which could extend into the beef sector. The consequences could be extremely serious so I hope the Minister or the Minister of State will address themselves to the difficulties. The Minister for the Public Service who has direct Cabinet responsibility in this issue advised me that he had priority Parliamentary Questions in the Dáil and that he was unable to be with us at the time the House decided to adjourn so it is not the Minister's fault that he is not present. I want to thank the Minister of State for coming in to listen to the Members speeches, who have an interest in this area. The Minister's absence is not to be taken as an indication of his lack of interest. He is acutely aware of the problem and has issued a public invitation to the union concerned to return to the negotiating table with him as he feels there are areas available to them yet that can be overcome and that they can reach agreement in the areas that are presently in dispute. If there is that kind of goodwill on the part of the Minister the same goodwill should be shown by the trade union movement. Let us proceed down the road of negotiation, discussion and dialogue until we exhaust all the avenues open to us. If agreement is not reached then it will be a matter for the Government to decide what action they should take. The Government have the responsibility to govern and to ensure that this important sector is adequately catered for particularly as we are in the area of perishable produce which must be handled and dealt with properly if major losses are to be avoided. Naturally if the producer can get his produce into the processing plants he will not be compensated for its production. It would be unfair if that should happen in the case of a sector who are the innocent party in this dispute. As in any other strike situation there are always innocent people who suffer.

We all agree that the farmers are not to blame in this instance. It is a matter of trade union dispute about an arbitration award. I think all the Members of this House would be at one in asking both sides to move to negotiate a settlement. From my knowledge of the Minister for the Public Service and his application to his post it will not be beyond his capabilities to achieve a settlement of the dispute. He has been instrumental with another Minister in achieving a settlement in another dispute. That is the role and responsibility of a Minister for Labour and the Public Service. There can be calls at times for his intervention in all sorts of strikes. It is not the function of a Minister to intervene in strikes particularly when we have so many structures set up, including the Labour Court, to deal with them. I understand that this dispute is beyond that stage and that it needs ministerial intervention because of the implications that would be involved in conceding in full on the disputed area. These consequences, I understand, would have extensive implications. For that reason I know that settlement will not be easy but I know that settlement will have to come about. Settlement is inevitable. Milk and beef are both perishable and need to be processed: otherwise the producer will not be compensated. That makes the matter urgent and one that this House should and has addressed itself to. I am sorry that in the process of trying to do this that we were in contravention of a Member's right to have a matter raised on the Adjournment but what allowed that to happen is a question that can be dealt with elsewhere. It is a pity that it should have happened in that way because I would not like what happened here today to be taken as lessening in any way the problem we are addressing ourselves to. I hope the Minister will use his good offices to achieve a settlement of this dispute.

Mr. Kiely

I should like to take this opportunity of speaking on this important matter. It is unfortunate that it has come about by way of a strike. It is unfortunate for Irish agriculture. I am delighted to see that the Minister of State is present to hear our comments. Senator Ferris has explained the absence of the Minister for the Public Service. I accept that explanation. We must admire Senator Ferris for the manner in which he defends Ministers when they need defending in this House. He is always very willing to come forward to defend a Minister and explain why he could not be here.

This strike is caused by members of the public service who classify produce for intervention. It will have a definite effect on Irish agriculture. Anything that has an effect on Irish agriculture affects the whole economy. Agricultural exports have a great bearing on the balance of payments. This strike is not helping that situation. I do not know what was involved in the strike or what negotiations took place prior to these people going on strike but as has been said by other speakers, there will have to be negotiations.

I am delighted to hear Senator Ferris mention that the Minister for the Public Service has issued a public invitation to meet him to discuss the impasse. It has an effect on the economy as a whole and especially on farmers who have already been severely affected this year and last year by the bad weather we have spoken about so often in this House on other emergency motions. I was present last Monday at the mart in Kilmallock when bales of hay saved last year realised £3 per bale. Imagine, at the end of May hay which was saved in 1984 and 1985 realising £3 per bale. Farmers should be harvesting their hay crop now. Late sowing of cereals will result in lower yields for the cereal farmers this year. They are very vocal about the adverse effect on their incomes of decisions other than the weather this year.

I was listening to the radio when it was stated that a factory in Clonee had to put 135 workers on protective notice from this evening because of this strike. I know that the Army are carrying out the work of the agricultural officers. The Minister for Agriculture, in order to save money for the economy, thought fit to introduce the Army NCOs to carry out this work. But this aggravated the situation. There will have to be some other means of communication with these people to see if something can be done besides resorting to something which aggravates matters. The people on strike are extending their industrial action because of this.

The dispute will also affect lamb products. Lamb is cheap enough at present and this strike will not help in this regard. I understand that factories could carry out the classification procedure quite satisfactorily. There is no need for personnel from the public service to do this work. To ensure that this classification is carried out properly there could be spot checks carried out by the Department on occasions. It is done in other businesses. I do not see why it could not be applied in this case.

The workers who have been put on protective notice are very upset. They have been put on protective notice because of the actions of the people who are on strike. The Government must also take some blame because they did not take action to avert the strike. They should do something now to ensure that work is resumed and the strike called off. Our meat exports realise £100 million a year. That is too big a sum to be put in jeopardy by what is happening at present. I know there is panic selling at present because of the bad weather and poor growth in grass. At Kilmallock mart last Monday there were 250 cows sold. Some of them had to be sold because there was nothing to feed them with and also because of scarcity of cash. If the people on strike had to take a reduction in income as the farmers had to, they would be disappointed. Farmers have no strike weapon like those in other professions.

There were never so many cattle in Kilmallock mart as there were last Monday for this time of year. The number was up by between 30 and 40 per cent on this time last year. Prices were down for smaller cattle. The fact that slaughtering of cattle has been affected by this strike, means that there has been an adverse effect on the price of those cattle. This is a very serious problem for the farming community. Everything should be done to ensure that the strike is ended. It has put the intervention system into disarray. The intervention system is very important for Ireland under EC regulations. Milk and milk products are perishable goods. It is important that everything possible is done to ensure that whatever surplus we have goes into intervention and is not lost to the Exchequer and to the farmers.

We have had a sequence of strikes, this strike, the teachers' strike and others, all of which have caused unrest among the public, especially those most closely affected. Is our industrial relations legislation adequate? Perhaps the Government should consider updating it to ensure a better core of discipline. The lack of discipline is not helping the progress of the economy.

Innocent people are suffering. Those most severely affected are the farming community. Whoever decides to go on strike, let it be the workers from the ESB, from factories and so on, the farmers suffer the greatest. This dispute needs ministerial intervention immediately. I appeal to the Minister to take whatever action is necessary straight away to end this strike so that the agricultural officers will be able to carry out this necessary work to ensure that exports continue.

An Cathaoirleach

Before I call on Senator Hourigan I would like to say that we will conclude the debate around 3.30 p.m. This will give the Minister half an hour to reply.

Mr. Hourigan

In common with the other Senators I am very concerned about this dispute. Its effects on the agricultural sector in particular and on the overall economy could be extremely far-reaching. As has been said we are dealing with perishable products, particularly in the dairying sector where it was necessary for the Minister for Agriculture to involve the Army to make sure that the processing of dairy products continued. The situation now affects the beef, mutton and other meat sectors. When we consider that our total food exports — beef and dairy products of the order of £2,500 million, we realise the magnitude of this problem. It is no harm to recognise the fact that efforts have been made by the Government since last January on an ongoing basis to endeavour to resolve this dispute and to head off the strike.

There were various concrete offers put forward by the Minister and the Government to the union concerned. I understand there were settlement proposals offered without any prejudice to the question of retrospection either on the part of the Government or of the unions and then there was a suggestion of ex gratia payments. The Minister and the Government were prepared to take specific aspects of cases and to examine them. All those have failed. It is important to know that the Minister has made it quite clear that he is prepared to be available at any stage to talk further with the unions and to have meaningful discussions with them. I urge that those discussions take place sooner rather than later because the continuation of this dispute can lead to nothing but aggravation of the entire situation and that would be very serious.

It is important to place on record that agriculture was never in a worse position to take a knock than it is at present. Because of bad weather conditions the industry has been through a very difficult time in the past 18 months. There are other factors but weather has contributed enormously to the difficulties that now confront all those in agriculture. I do not think that agriculture is out of its troubles because we still have a winter weather in the midst of summer and the prospects, unless the weather changes quickly, for the forthcoming winter are very bleak with regard to saving fodder and hay with regard to silage. When the dire prospects that exist in agriculture are coupled with the serious over borrowing by most farmers, their indebtedness to banks, to coops, to the ACC and the other lending institutions, one can perceive quite easily that many farmers during 1986 will have a nil income position. This might be borne in mind by people in pursuit of the best deal they in justice feel they should get. There are many farmers who will have no income during 1986. There are figures to prove that. This has arisen because of a number of factors but mainly because of the bad weather that has continued for so long.

Any action taken by the Minister for Agriculture or any other Minister to head off losses in this area are totally justified. The involvement of the Army in an endeavour to save £40 million per week in the dairying sector is fully justified. There is no question that anybody could make a case against that. It might be a sensitive area but nevertheless we are dealing with a lot of money at the peak time of production in that area. Milk is very perishable. The other products we are referring to like beef, mutton, bacon and pork are all very perishable and animals very quickly get too advanced for slaughtering purposes in order to grade well.

I hope the Minister for Labour, Deputy Quinn, the Minister of State, Deputy J. O'Keeffe and all others concerned will be successful in the very near future in bringing about a solution to the problem. Any action that is needed on the part of the Government to minimise and eliminate where possible any losses to our farming community, who cannot afford to take any more setbacks, is totally justified.

Mr. B. Ryan

I will be uncharacteristically brief. There is no doubt that a crisis of enormous proportions has befallen agriculture over the last two years. While all of us would have enormous sympathy with the people who are at the receiving end of that it is also true that agriculture is of its nature cyclical, it is of its nature at risk from climatic and other conditions and, therefore, we as a community have endeavoured to build into policies to do with agriculture what are deemed to be adequate by the Community protections against the wilder fluctuations in agricultural production in particular, through the operation of the common agricultural policy.

As a Socialist I am always amused at the extent to which people, who ostensibly are committed to the free market and the private enterprise defend the most extraordinary level of State intervention when it comes under the heading of the common agricultural policy. The further to the right in terms of general economic policy people are the more enthusiastic they tend to be about the common agricultural policy. I would identify in particular the current president of the IFA as a particular proponent of free market economics for everybody else except himself. He is very much in favour of intervention on a grand, glorious and enormous scale.

It is true that the current predicament is threatening the livelihood of a large number of people. I will not say that I support the introduction of the Army because it is like saying to somebody who sets his house on fire: "what am I supposed to do now?" The wiser course would be to take the necessary precautions to ensure that these things do not happen. It brings us back to the question of public service pay and the Government's policy on it. It also brings us back to a profound miscalculation which the Government made, that they assumed, particularly in the case of the teachers, that the level of award made by the public service arbitrator would be far less than 10 per cent.

I suspect that the teachers unions did not expect a 10 per cent award from the arbitrator and that what happened was that the Government, instead of refusing to go into conciliation and arbitration and special claims, because they feared the consequences, found themselves in a much more difficult position when the arbitrator made awards well above what the Government anticipated he would make and where the Government presumed, far too generous to themselves that the arbitrator would listen to the Government's argument on public service pay and on the state of the public finances.

When people who everybody has admitted have done their job extremely well and who I gather all of the Ministers involved in Government have acknowledged as being efficient, flexible and having contributed considerably to the operatons of the Irish agricultural industry, are forced to go on strike, you have to look at a more deep-seated malaise than just the usual image of greedy public servants who should in the popular parlance be thankful for their jobs. There is a profound sense of grievance there because when people go on strike for one, two or three weeks they will probably lose more money in the process than they would gain from the payment of many of these awards.

What you are actually seeing is not so much people on strike about payments, as people on strike about their rights to be treated the same as everybody else. What is happening in this country is that the public service employees, by and large — we can see it on a grand scale in Dublin and Grafton Street is highly illustrative of the state of industrial relations in Dublin Corporation at present— have come to the conclusion that they will not be listened to about their right to be paid properly unless they exercise their considerable muscle. We are seeing now the early parts of what could be a very long, hot and restless summer in the whole area of public service pay.

I regret that agriculture is particularly vulnerable to industrial action at present because of last year, because of what could properly be described as the still present winter, I was nearly knocked down by hailstones when I was coming in here at lunch time, so we still have winter and this has devastated agriculture. I do not have as much sympathy for farmers as perhaps other people would have because I believe they defended themselves very effectively against contributing to the national Exchequer in the good years, and postponed all efforts on the part of the rest of the community to extract a proper level of taxation. They are now in a state of increasing frenzy because of the deprivation of income that has resulted from weather and other conditions and the current strike.

The simplest solution for the Government would be to pay these people their proper award made to them by the public service arbitrator. If the Government do not want to operate proper industrial relations in the public service, then let them stop working through conciliation and arbitration and decide to do it some other way. You cannot use the rules because they suit you and then suddenly change the rules when they no longer suit you. This is what the Government have done in the case of the teachers and brought us to the brink of chaos. They are now doing it in the case of the agricultural community and bringing us to the brink of perhaps not as much immediate human damage but enormous cost in financial terms to the agricultural community and consequently to the community at large.

My view is that the Government should pay this award and if they do not want to pay public service awards and do not want to pay a special pay award made by arbitrators, they should cease to gamble on the arbitrator hearing their side, should scrap the whole conciliation and arbitration scheme and try to deal with industrial relations in another way. Conciliation and arbitration has worked extremely well over the years for Government in terms of minimising industrial relations problems. It is regrettable, because it did not work the way the Government wished that they have effectively jeopardised the whole of the public service conciliation and arbitrations scheme.

I regret that they have walked us into yet another crisis, that there is another one brewing in Dublin, and suspect there will be a succession of these crises as people in the public service, particularly those who are very poorly paid at present, begin to realise that their scope for free negotiation is being increasingly restricted. We have a major crisis on our hands. My solution quite simply would be that these people are entitled to be paid what was awarded to them through the normal procedures of conciliation and arbitration.

Minister of State at the Department of the Public Service (Mr. J. O'Keeffe)

I thank the Senators for their contributions to this debate. At the outset, it might help if I recounted, briefly, the background to this dispute.

During the negotiations earlier this year with the Civil Service unions on an agreement on the 25th round and related matters, all outstanding arbitration findings were discussed in a working party. The Union of Professional and Technical Civil Servants (UPTCS) were concerned in nine of these findings. Certain proposals were put which took account of the special factors which existed in the case of some of the UPTCS findings, for example, that offers had been made prior to arbitration but had been rejected by the union. In the event the UPTCS did not accept the package of proposals then offered.

On 5 May the UPTCS gave formal notice of industrial action beginning on 12 May in the Department of Agriculture. My colleague, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, Minister for the Public Service, met representatives of the union on Saturday evening, 10 May, and confirmed the offers made at the earlier talks on the 25th round which went some way towards recognising the special position of the UPTCS arbitration findings. He also indicated that he was prepared to enter into negotiations with the union with a view to securing a settlement on the same broad lines as had been agreed with the teacher's unions.

UPTCS would not agree to continue negotiations on the basis which the Minister had outlined and unfortunately the industrial action went ahead. The union maintained that their arbitration findings were unique and they were pressing for a commitment to full implementation in all cases.

We have consistently asked the union to reconsider their position in this case. The present and potential damage to the economy of their action is out of all proportion to the alleged scale of their grievance. We have indicated that we are prepared to be flexible with a view to finding a negotiated settlement.

I would like at this stage to reiterate in full the statement made on Friday last, 23 May, in relation to this matter. In that statement it was made clear that we were quite prepared to accept that the position of each side should be recognised by the other, that is any settlement should be without prejudice to the rights of UPTCS to pursue their claim for full payment and equally without prejudice to the Government's position that payment of full retrospection or commitment to such payment was not possible.

Secondly, we indicated that we could offer UPTCS ex gratia payments on the same general basis as other groups had got. Thirdly, we also indicated that we were prepared to explore further the union's contention that there were features in the individual findings which would merit special treatment. Indeed, as far back as January last various offers on the individual findings had been made, including an offer to implement in full the finding in the case of the beef classification officers because of the special features of that finding. UPTCS, however, indicated that they could not agree to anything less than virtually full retrospection for all groups.

We consider that we have made very reasonable overtures to the union to resume negotiations with a view to secur ing a settlement to this dispute. We reiterated our position in this regard as late as yesterday in the Dáil in response to Private Notice Questions. I want to state clearly in this House on behalf of the Government that we are willing and ready to resume negotiations with the union.

While I have stated the factual basis on which we are prepared to negotiate I am not laying down any pre-conditions for discussions with the union. I feel sure that we have not exhausted the room for manoeuvre in negotiations.

Once again, therefore, I would ask UPTCS to reconsider their position before major damage is caused to the agricultural industry and to return to the negotiating table with a view to securing a settlement of this dispute. I think that the House will agree that the general basis which I have outlined for such a settlement cannot, by any standards, be described as ungenerous. I sincerely hope that the union will take up my offer.

Mr. Ellis

Could we ask the Minister to convey the contents of his speech to the union immediately?

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

Of course. The speech will be available to them.

The Seanad adjourned at 3.30 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 4 June 1986.