I think you can.

Sentiment score: 0.00

I thank Deputy Gibney for bringing forward this important Bill and Seanadóir Higgins for originally instigating it. I am very happy to support the objectives behind the Bill. As has been said, it is very straightforward that price should not be the only consideration when awarding State contracts. That is a no-brainer, not least because I am dealing with major problems, as I am sure others are. The national children's hospital is the obvious big example, but, at local level, I am dealing with an apartment complex that was delivered as social housing. The tenants in it tell me that it is going to have to be pulled down. They want out, although they have only been in it for a year. That is just dreadful. After waiting for a decade or more to get their social homes, the building is rotten with mould and damp. There is water ingress in the car park that is in the vicinity of the electrics. It is a mess. As stated, people have only been living there for a year. That shows why quality is important. Somebody can just bid on price, but if they are cowboys, they can cut corners. I have heard anecdotally and seen some evidence in social housing provision of specifications being lowered. In fact, in the instance I am talking about - what has happened needs to be investigated - the developer originally planned to build it for the private sector and when it was contracted by an AHB to deliver social housing, the specifications were lowered. I think that is what actually happened but I am just speculating. The Bill proposes that there should be a 50:50 quality-price ratio for large projects. Often, people might bid low on price but you get a higher quality for a higher price. The one with the higher quality may often end up being lower in the end because we know that sometimes it is the cowboys who engage in the race to the bottom and the type of lowball bidding that gets them the contract, and then it ends up costing a lot more. They have the State over a barrel because they got the contract and the State feels it is in too deep to say anything and they can ratchet up the price. I do not know if it was mentioned, but I was just reading an article about the watchdog - the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC - that refers to cartels that are rigging their bids for State projects. The article mentions areas like construction, but not just construction, where companies are working together to see how they can bid up the price or co-ordinate in order to get the best price from the State for contracts. In the context of what is proposed in the Bill, it is eminently sensible to have these considerations much higher up the agenda when we are contracting out or procuring projects. Bríd Smith, the former Deputy, introduced a Bill in the previous Dáil to ensure that there should be no competition on wages and conditions of employment when it comes to tendering for State contracts. I will take the example of public transport and Go-Ahead. Wages and conditions are significantly less favourable for workers in Go-Ahead, which is providing public transport services. That is also why the company finds it more difficult to get drivers and why their buses are more unreliable. They do not have enough drivers because they pay them poorly. Dublin Bus is not much better, but it is a little better in terms of its treatment of bus workers, mechanics and so on. Ultimately, that impacts on the quality of the public bus service because it is determined by price competition. What they are competing in respect of is, essentially, a race to the bottom in terms of the treatment of employees. That is consequently very stressful for the workers, who are under pressure. There is a box system, and there are people on the radio who say that drivers either have to slow down or speed up because of traffic congestion, which is completely out of their control in any event. This is all to meet certain criteria. Essentially, privatisation is undermining the wages and conditions of workers. I am happy to support the Bill. Whenever the State is considering outsourcing, it should also consider whether it would be better for it to do something directly. I will mention something that is topical. Kevin Reynolds from RTÉ was on "Morning Ireland" earlier. He stated that workers are now voting no-confidence in the management of RTÉ, although they are really pointing through that to Government policy. Essentially, the ability of RTÉ to produce public service broadcasting is being dismantled. They are absolutely right. It will all be outsourced to independent private companies to do the job of public service broadcasting. Kevin Reynolds rightly made the case that private companies will not want to make a lot of the public service broadcasting programmes that we need because they would not consider it profitable or important, or they would be wary of the legal risks involved. They might not have resources necessary to make them even if they wanted to, so the stuff that we need our public service broadcaster to do will just not happen. Under the guise of reforming RTÉ, the public service broadcaster, we are actually dismantling it. The workers are very angry about that. They are absolutely right to be. I tried to highlight the consequences that can have in areas like the film industry where conditions are affected. We pump huge amounts of money into film production companies and the employment rights and conditions of workers are not fully vindicated, even though large amounts of public money are being invested. These are just some examples. We must consider whether we should be doing this ourselves directly rather than going out to tender in the first place. Would we have more control over the process? Could we guarantee quality and the right pay and conditions of employees? These are all considerations, rather than increasingly defaulting to outsourcing these things. I will say – it may be an ideological point – that the privatisation of a lot of things that used to be done by the public sector is an ongoing agenda, one we have seen over the last 20 or 30 years. Things that used to be done by the public sector are increasingly outsourced to private companies, with very questionable benefits and, in many cases, serious adverse consequences at all levels for workers, including the pay and conditions of workers. It also affects things like tax revenue. I remember when I was out supporting the pickets of bin workers of a privatised bin company, Greyhound Recycling. It is a service that used to be carried out by Dublin City Council. They pointed out at the time that Greyhound Recycling, the private company they worked for which treated them so poorly they felt the need to go on strike, was tax resident in a tax haven. Should that not be a criterion we look at? We are awarding contracts to companies that do not pay tax here or are actively trying to avoid paying tax. A huge amount of public money is going into their pockets. A lot of the private sector, which goes on about entrepreneurial ability and all the rest of it, is entirely dependent on State money. It is kind of ironic. There is often this counter-positioning of the private sector versus the public sector. In truth, however, a huge amount of the private sector is completely dependent on money from the public sector. We should at least demand quality and proper treatment of workers.

Sentiment score: 0.04