Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Economy – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:30 pm on 2 December 2024.
One of the four themes of the consultation is "Voice and representation". That is to ensure that people have the rights to organise and to be represented by trade unions and that those rights become enshrined. The British Government have retreated from those rights in many ways over the past 14 years.
Thankfully, some of that has not happened here, so we are not in as bad a position as they are in Britain. However, we want to be sure that employees have the right to representation and the right to organise themselves. We are working through the consultation responses. Our intention is to draft legislation next year to reflect the outcome of the consultation.