asked the Minister for Labour if he is aware of the concern expressed by a number of trade unions regarding the practice, recently adopted by the Labour Court, of allowing employers to make confidential submissions to the court, which are not disclosed to the workers or unions, to enable them to respond; if he is happy with the practice; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Labour Court.
13.
The procedure of the Labour Court is laid down in section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1946, which provides that the court may make rules for the regulation of their proceedings. Rules were made by the court in 1946 which allow the procedure to be observed at a sitting of the court to be regulated by the chairman.
Apart from this, the court issued a detailed statement in December 1946 on disclosure of information given to the court. This statement provided that the extent to which information received by the court may be disclosed is a matter for the discretion of the court.
The question of the use of information by the court is therefore a matter entirely for the court themselves to regulate. If a party to a Labour Court hearing has reservations about the operation of these procedures, then they should raise the matter directly with the court.
The Minister will be aware that concern has been expressed in two specific cases recently, one by the Marine Port and General Workers' Union and the other by the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, where employers involved in disputes with the unions concerned submitted reports to the court and which appeared to the unions to have had a direct bearing on the outcome of the court's decision. However, the unions were not in a position to respond to the information given. Does the Minister not consider that situation unsatisfactory and that if it continues it is likely to lead to an undermining of confidence in the court, in their operations and in the way they deal with cases?
I have responsibility for the Labour Court but effectively they are controlled and run by the social partners. The very independence of the court is the bedrock on which their authority rests. Consequently, the workers' representatives and the employers' representatives have not only a right but an opportunity to express their concern as to how the court conduct business. If a union is unhappy about the way in which the court or a member of the court — or in this instance the vice-chairman — has conducted business in relation to a certain matter, there is a clear line of communication and procedures open to that union to seek redress. For me, as Minister for Labour, to attempt to intervene would be dangerous because it could be construed that I was interfering with the independence of the court, and I do not propose to do that.
I can appreciate the Minister's reluctance to appear to interfere with the independence of the court, and I agree with him on that, but I am raising this question because it appears that confidence in the court by the trade union side at least is likely to be undermined if the procedure adopted at present is continued. Would the Minister not agree that a decision made 40 years ago in relation to confidentiality of submissions, at a time when court proceedings were open to the public and to the press, is no longer valid and perhaps he might take it upon himself to have private discussions with the people concerned to see how the matter can be resolved?
It might be misleading to imply that there has not been a review of the operations of the court since 1946, but perhaps the Deputy was not implying that. In the first instance the union involved, or any union, have access to Congress in an official capacity, or have access to individual members of Congress who have been nominated to serve as ordinary members of the court, in order to ensure that the court complies with standards believed to be acceptable to both sides. Until that process is exhausted, and a union has gone down that road and is not satisfied with the outcome, I would be very reluctant to intervene.
I agree with Deputy De Rossa and the Minister about the independence of the court. I have read the submissions of the unions in both cases but in one case at least the submission raised a lot of concern. I am not sure how the Minister can intervene. Let us take the employer who is making his case and refused to make a statement in public but hands the chairman a confidential document. The next day rumours start about what may have been in that submission and the person about whom the submission was written suffers because of that. If the chairman makes a ruling which seems — and I say "seems"— to have been influenced by that submission, that can leave the court in a dangerous position.
Any document submitted to the court should be seen by both sides. This process is followed in all our courts. While the regulation was tightly written in 1946, the interpretation of how this can be applied in the dispute we are talking about is open to question. It would not solve the dispute but perhaps——
The Deputy is making a long statement.
Perhaps this created unnecessary problems. I agree with Deputy De Rossa that the Minister might raise this matter with the court during their next meeting because there is a concern in this House that the Minister should not be seen to interfere and that the independence of the court is real.