I thank the Chairman for his invitation. We are not in a position to help the committee to the full extent today because we have not made a final decision on our position on the treaty. It might be helpful if we indicate the considerations that will influence that debate in congress. Congress has strongly supported European integration, most recently in the referendums on the Nice treaty, particularly the second referendum. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which will be given legal force by this treaty, is an important step forward in protecting the rights of workers. Our initial concern, namely, that Ireland would opt out of the charter like the UK, has been assuaged by several commitments we have received from the Government during the summer. That was a relief. Nevertheless, a number of developments in recent years have undermined support in the trade union movement for the European project in Ireland and Europe. I will address a number of these developments.
One such development relates to the impact of immigration on the labour market. During the build up to the Nice referendum, those opposing enlargement mounted a strong campaign and stated that many migrants would come to Ireland to take Irish jobs and so on. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, strongly opposed that point of view and was the only prominent social organisation to campaign as such. ICTU took this stance because assessments made by the European Commission, based on empirical evidence relating to the accession of Spain, Portugal and Greece, indicated that only a modest flow of people went from less developed areas of the EU to richer areas. The projection at the time was around 15,000 people.
On this basis, ICTU felt that migration from accession countries would be manageable and would not cause great trouble. We had no problem in principle with the issue because we are aware that many of our members have travelled abroad over the years to work in countries throughout the world. Some of these people became senior members of trade union organisations in their adopted countries — for example, John Sweeney, from Leitrim, is president of the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations, AFLCIO, and is my opposite number in America. However, we did not know at the time that the Irish Government, along with those of the United Kingdom and Sweden, intended to open the labour market from day one as this would have caused us to ask certain questions. More particularly, we did not know that no other EU member state intended to do likewise and, as a result, there has been significant migration to Ireland.
We felt aggrieved that we were not consulted on this matter because the decision exposed an existing labour market of around 2 million people to a labour market of 72 million people. Moreover, the labour market is virtually unregulated. For some time prior to this decision being taken, ICTU tried to have the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Mary Harney, strengthen the enforcement of labour rights in the labour market but she refused all representations in this regard. These representations did not relate to ICTU forecasts on changing conditions but merely pointed out that conditions were not sufficiently strong with regard to the needs of the economy. Specifically, ICTU pressed strongly for an increase in the size of the labour inspectorate and through the Sustaining Progress partnership agreement four extra people were added. This was a clear policy decision and it was not opposed by the Minister for Finance, but it was opposed by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
The decision to immediately open the Irish labour market to migrants from accession countries was made at the behest of businesses and this fact has since been acknowledged by the Government. It told us that problems were not supposed to arise in this regard. Had ICTU been consulted on this matter, I do not think it would have opposed the decision. We were conscious that this represented an extraordinary development that had to be acknowledged for historical and other reasons. At the time, an opinion widely held was that Europe owed an historical debt to the countries that had been behind the Iron Curtain and that some believed had been abandoned by the West after the Second World War. I do not think ICTU would have opposed the decision but, had it been consulted, it would have suggested that some protection was necessary to take account of changing circumstances and create proper provisions for regulating the labour market.
As it happened, ICTU was not consulted and serious problems ensued; most committee members will be aware of what happened at Irish Ferries. That company made a deliberate attempt to exploit people from eastern Europe by paying them less than half the Irish minimum wage. There was a great deal of support for congress's position against that type of practice. Around 650,000 people turned out to protest in Dublin and various other parts of the country. It was the biggest single protest I have ever seen in my career. That development led to a situation where these issues were raised with the employers and the Government and, after six or seven months of negotiation, we managed to put together a regime of legislation, some of which has been implemented under the Towards 2016 agreement.
I also want to mention, in the context of what was happening in Europe, a parallel decision made in Europe at that time which reinforced the difficulties we were experiencing and which was seen across Europe as an attempt to undermine conditions of employment. I refer to the draft services directive. That was quite a negative development in terms of how people across Europe viewed the European project. Recently, there has been a failure to agree on a directive on agency workers, which is an important related consideration. An initiative was taken by the Portuguese EU Presidency, but was opposed by Ireland and the UK, and no agreement was reached. The essence of the proposed rule was that a person who is provided to an employer by an agency would be entitled to the same conditions of employment as a regular employee after a certain period of time. The period of time proposed by the Portuguese Presidency was six weeks, which was broadly acceptable as a compromise across Europe and by us as well. However, it was not possible to reach agreement.
At a domestic level, the issue of equality of treatment of agency workers, in a parallel process, is unfinished business from the Towards 2016 agreement to which I have already referred. Ireland's opposition, both domestically and in Europe, is consistent with a position it adopted in 1999 when it opposed a directive on seafarers which, if introduced, would have obviated the fuss of the Irish Ferries dispute because seafarers would have been protected under the terms of that directive.
We are currently engaged in discussions with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Interestingly, the Department has told us there is opposition to the adoption by Ireland of a particular directive on agency workers on the grounds that certain conditions we have suggested — for example, that agencies through which people are employed in Ireland should have a base in this country and keep records here — would be a disproportionate imposition on these agencies in terms of the rights of establishment. This is notwithstanding the fact that Ireland is one of three European countries which does not have some degree of regulation of agencies.
Some of this opposition from Europe struck us as strange and we were quite sceptical about it. Some questions asked in the European Parliament on this issue got a different answer from the one reported to us by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. In addition, employment agencies are excluded from the terms of the services directive which was eventually introduced. This becomes clearer in view of the recent Laval judgment of the European Court of Justice, which was mentioned briefly in the previous session. While the implications of that decision have yet to be fully assessed, it does appear to privilege free movement of workers over trade union rights and to move decisively towards favouring a legally based industrial relations system. This has major implications for the voluntary system of industrial relations which has operated in this country since 1946. It follows on a Supreme Court judgment relating to Ryanair from last year under which any legal right to collective bargaining was denied to workers. Overall, the assessment of the trade union movement across Europe is that an effort is being made to introduce the services directive by the back door.
In listing all of these complaints, I am not attempting to share our problems with the committee. A colleague of mine uses a good expression — a problem shared is a problem abandoned. We do not come in pursuit of that objective but to give the committee a flavour of some of the issues that will influence and inform the debate within our own movement. They make for a difficult climate in which the traditional support we have had for European integration cannot be assumed, at least at the moment. It must be acknowledged that the charter of fundamental rights is a valuable document not to be rejected, set aside or undervalued easily, albeit that its effect is likely to be in case law rather than directly because it comes into force only if the country is legislating in an area affected by the provisions of the different articles of the charter. The problem, and this is something that will have to come out in the wash, so to speak, is that the Laval judgment raises doubts about the way the charter ultimately will be interpreted by the court and hence the value of case law that might arise from it.
The labour market implications of enlargement may be managed ultimately if there is the political will to do so, but there is a sense that enlargement has moved Europe's political centre of gravity towards a more neoliberal direction. It is a factor that many of the countries of eastern Europe, because of their history, experience of communism and so on, probably react against any collectivist type of spirit but, nevertheless, as a clinical assessment, my colleagues and I are of the view that the centre of gravity of politics has moved more so in that direction and the outlook for more social legislation is diminished accordingly.
That will suit the Commission because in our experience this Commission is the most neoliberal we have ever had. There is literally no affinity between our movement and the Commission, which is an interesting change because, up to this period, the European Trade Union Confederation generally regarded the Commission as a friend, broadly speaking. That was blown wide open at the time of the services directive when it was found, and perhaps this was a welcome development, that there was much better engagement between the Parliament and our people than between the Commission and our people. It must be acknowledged that there is some strengthening of the role of the Parliament in the proposed treaty, which is welcome.
The absence of a legally based industrial relations system here means that unless we have primary social legislation coming from Europe, nothing will happen here. For the past 30 years, most of our social legislation has been driven by Europe. Equal pay was only introduced here in 1974 on foot of a complaint made by congress to the Commission about the non-implementation of a directive at that time. We owe much to Europe and to great reforming Presidents like Jacques Delors, but one fears that the era of social legislation may be over and with it the concept of social Europe. It is in social Europe that trade union support is reposed and, if that goes, we are looking at a completely different project.
In contrast, Europe is leading the way in developing legislation to regulate competition that guarantees that companies can have certainty about the way to conduct business across borders. This activity is privileged over concern for the rights of workers but while companies' rights have been codified and strengthened, workers can only expect loose frameworks and vague approaches to enforcement.
That is a bleak view and it is in marked contrast to what members heard earlier but it is better to be realistic about these matters because these are the questions that are being put to us by our own people and we must have a credible explanation for them about the way matters stand currently. I would ask the members, as a committee of the Oireachtas and as influential people, not to underestimate the extent to which there is growing antipathy between the labour movement and the neoliberal Commission in Europe. It has gone too far and before they are finished, the neoliberals will destroy the European project. They make it impossible for people on the social democratic wing of politics, who are pro-European, to remain in that position. They expose us all to attack from people who present arguments to us which cannot be easily refuted.
These are the problems we see as regards this referendum. Apart from that, it is not too hard a job to tackle.
