I also wish to welcome the trade unionists who are in the Gallery tonight. I thank Deputies Conway-Walsh and Guirke and the Sinn Féin team for bringing forward this motion. It is a very apt and important motion as we approach 1 May, which is workers’ day around the world, and celebrate trade union week. It is a time when we remind ourselves of the working class struggle when citizens were treated no better than slaves, working themselves to the bone for a few scraps from the rich man’s table to feed their families. In our country, we have working-class heroes such as Connolly and Larkin, to name but two. They knew the true value and power of workers standing together to achieve decent conditions and decent wages. When we fast forward to today, we find that 75% of companies in Ireland will not indulge in collective bargaining with trade unions. In fact, the practice of union busting is rampant. The irony is those same companies often receive public contracts and grants funded by taxpaying workers to the tune of millions. Successive Governments have stood idly by. For years, they played a salient role in denying and voting against legislation to allow workers the right to collective bargaining year after year. Eighty-nine TDs signed a pledge to support collective bargaining, but they are complicit in accepting companies banning access to union representatives to workplaces and the exploitation of 200,000 low-paid workers. The Government's action plan is a knee-jerk response to the European Union directive to increase collective bargaining to 80%. One has to ask why any Government would stall until 2026 to put together a so-called action plan to accept collective bargaining as a right of working people to protect their jobs and conditions. Workers deserve to be treated better. It is they who provide the skills. It is they who keep the wheels of industry turning. The Minister can legislate for the right to collective bargaining now. He can include in any Government contract the right of trade union representatives to access the working place now. He can deliver a living wage now. He can expand remote working rights now. Then again, as Connolly would have said, whose side is the Minister really on? I urge all TDs to support this motion.

Sentiment score: 0.29