Ireland: Government not giving priority to promised union rights legislation

The Irish Government admitted in May 2010 that no work was under way on commitments, made in 2008, to draw up legislation on trade union representation rights and on the victimisation of union members.

The transitional agreement reached in September 2009 within the framework of Ireland's current 10-year national social partnership agreement, Towards 2016, committed the Government to:

• establish a review process to consider the legal and other steps necessary to enable the employee representation mechanisms established under previous agreements - and in legislation - to "operate as they had been intended"; and
• bring forward legislative proposals to prohibit the victimisation of trade union members and to prohibit the "incentivisation of persons not to be members of a trade union".