Employment rights system is 'broken' claims Bruton - Sunday Times 4th August 2011
The employment rights system in Ireland is “broken” and “inefficient”, according to Richard Bruton, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.
Bruton said disgruntled workers are “forum-hopping” between the Labour Court, Labour Relations Commission (LRC) and National Employment Rights Authority (NERA), to get favourable decisions.
The minister is to launch proposals tomorrow for the establishment of a single agency to fulfill the role of five employment rights bodies: the Labour Court, LRC, NERA, Employment Appeals Authority (EEA) and Equality Tribunal. The plan envisages a two-tier structure, with one dealing with cases as they are lodged and the other handling appeals.
The feeling that it is necessary to have lawyers to deal with labour-law enforcement agencies has imposed further costs on employers and trade unions, according to Bruton. This has created lengthy waiting lists and encouraged litigants to pursue parallel cases with different agencies to see which yields the best result.
The minister said he wants the merger of the five agencies to be completed in 2012. The move is unlikely to result in savings of more than €1m from a combined budget of €21m, he said, but it will save employers significant sums in fighting duplicate employment cases.
“The system is broken, and the chief executive of the LRC, Kieran Mulvey, is one of the strongest advocates of the need to fix it,” the Minister said.
“There is consensus across the agencies that things go too quickly into the adversarial route instead of [seeking] an early opportunity for a clear understanding on both sides and [using] simple mediation and conciliation to resolve differences. I think there is an acceptance that the system is broken”.
Bruton said the original ambition for the employment rights system was the creation of something that was simple to use and easy to understand.
“That hasn’t been the case. It has become more legalistic in its approach,” he said. “Issues don’t get resolved early, people feel the need to have lawyers to represent them, where the whole intention of the system was to have resolution in an informal way. There is an important role of adjudication and conciliation in industrial disputes, but we need a system that underpins them and makes it efficient.”
A five-week consultation period is to follow the launch of the department’s proposals tomorrow.