Madam, - The Taoiseach has said he did not wish to see companies achieving competitiveness based on poor wages, the casualisation of labour and poor health and safety standards.
Why, then, did his Government give 75 million Eastern European citizens the right to enter the Irish labour market in January 2004? We were then only one of four small countries to allow this. Moreover, we were also the only English-speaking country to make such an offer.
Despite the silence from all the main political parties many people pointed out at the time that this would enable Irish employers to draw on a huge pool of cheap, non-union labour, who were working in low wage economies and were living in countries with heavy unemployment.
Prior to this the Department of Labour handed out work permits like confetti, because, according to the Tánaiste, Irish employers were unable to recruit Irish workers to fill job vacancies. What she really meant was that Irish workers were not willing to work for the low rates of pay which the liberalisation of the work permit system encouraged Irish employers to offer.
This general development was and is encouraged by the Government and by sections of the media which want to condition the public to believe that this is a matter in which it really has no legitimate say, other than to accept that if anyone wants to locate themselves in this country, then they have the right to be here.
The result of these economic policies is that all over the country employers, large and small, are seeking cheap immigrant labour. Every gerry builder has a few; so has every other shop; every other lawn was getting a trim last summer by immigrants working for €3 an hour upwards, etc, etc.
This trend has been gaining momentum since 1997. Now, trade union leaders are kicking up a rumpus. Why have they been so silent since 1997? It seems to me that it's a bit late to be demanding to represent workers' rights, when these rights, for the lower paid in particular, were sold out long ago by a Government, which ironically is led by a "socialist" Taoiseach. - Yours, etc,
SIMON O'DONNELL,
Church Place,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.