Canadian visas snapped up in 12 minutes, says Sinn Féin

The 3,850 Canadian visas available last night were taken up within 12 minutes by Irish people wishing to emigrate, Sinn Féin TD Michael Colreavy told the Dáil.

“That indicates the level of demand from young people to go to countries where wages are higher and opportunities plentiful and where there is decency and fairness,” he said.

Mr Colreavy was speaking during a debate on a Sinn Féin Private Members’ motion calling for an end to zero-hour contracts. “Do these young people and their families see the economic improvements being trumpeted by Government?” said Mr Colreavy. “They most assuredly do not.”

He said Ireland was "a high-cost and low-paid" society, adding that when the purchasing power of Irish workers was accounted for, the country was below the EU average.

Mr Colreavy said that since the foundation of the State successive governments had failed to introduce statutory collective bargaining. “This ensures that organised labour, especially in the low-paid sector, do not have adequate means to push for better pay and conditions,” he added.

It was shocking, he said, to think that Labour, claiming its heritage from the likes of James Connolly, had presided over a situation where there was no introduction of legislation on collective bargaining.

Entitled to

basic knowledge Mr Colreavy said workers should be entitled to the basic knowledge about the number of hours they worked and what they would be paid. “The power, at present, lies completely in the hands of the employer who is able to force workers to accept conditions they lay out,” he added.

He said a perfect example was Dunnes Stores, who let go workers who took part in recent industrial action.

Minister of State for Business and Employment Ged Nash said he was not impressed "by the pretence of Sinn Féin and its southern leadership that one side of this House has a record in government to protect and the other does not".

He said that in the Republic, Sinn Féin was a party of protest and the worker's friend. "In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin is a party of government, with a record of its own to defend on the North's low-wage economy," he added.

Mr Nash said of the almost 90,000 more people at work since the launch of the Action Plan for Jobs in 2012, a remarkable 86 per cent were full-time rather than casual or temporary positions.

He said 29,100 new jobs were created last year alone, with most of them full-time.

The proportion of Irish workers on temporary contracts had now fallen back to the pre-recession level of 9.5 per cent, he said. “This remains significantly below the EU average of 14.4 per cent.”

He said there was a need to map out and better understand the prevalence and impact of zero-hour contracts in the Republic to better understand their impact on employees and to establish if policy responses were required.

It was for that reason, he added, that last February he had announced the appointment of the University of Limerick to carry out precisely such a study on the prevalence of zero-hour and low-hour contracts and their impact.