THE GREAT catch-phrase of the medieval map-makers was "Here be dragons"
They would draw out the contours of the world they knew come to the coastline beyond which they knew nothing, draw waves to indicate a vast ocean, and - amid the waves - pen the legend Hic Sunt Dracones. Meaning we really don't know what's out there.
We haven't investigated what's out there. But it's sure to be mad, bad and dangerous to know, so take note of our generic warning.
Much the same kind of approach is being taken to the modern workplace by Eithne Fitzgerald, Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment, in her attempts to apply what's popularly known as the 48-hour rule to this country.
She is approaching it as if the workplace here in the 1990s was the workplace of Industrial Revolution England: a place of sweatshops and slaving children, of Simon Legree bosses and powerless, subservient workers.
The reality is just a bit different. Go out to some of the big new electronics plants and you find a workforce the majority of whom are in their early 20s, stuffed to the gills with education and earning good salaries.
In some of the new businesses springing up around the country cars start arriving in the staff parking area before dawn and are still there after dusk, their owners boasting ruefully about working 60- or 70-hour weeks.
These are not the Dickensian downtrodden dragging their rags around their consumption-eroded bodies to obey the owner's demands for more output. These are individuals in designer gear, many of them entitled to elaborate health protection schemes, pushed to work long hours, not by employer demands backed by dismissal threats, but by mortgage commitments and the excitement of being in at a start-up.
In short, no dragons.
Yet the Government, in forcing through the Organisation of Working Time Bill, 1996, is behaving as if the dragons of the bad old days were still out there. The Government is insisting on the imposition of a maximum 48-hour week, refusing to avail of derogations which would mitigate the promise of mindless meddling and announcing (this week) a completely pointless three-year phasing-in period.
THE IDA's top man, Kieran McGowan, earlier this year became seriously concerned about the decision not to take advantage, in Ireland, of the "opt-out" clause in the EU directive which would allow employees - if they wanted to - to work more than the maximum 48 hours a week.
Mr McGowan pointed out that since the UK is likely to take advantage of this clause, and since the UK is our main competitor for international mobile investment, it will soon be highlighting its opt-out as giving it a competitive advantage over us.
Shortly after it was sent to a Dail Committee, Mr McGowan's letter was "withdrawn". Interesting, this move, on two grounds. First of all, withdrawing a letter penned by a man of such position and experience is as unrealistic as telling a jury to disregard a vital piece of testimony.
Secondly, although Mr McGowan, as a good public servant, has denied any suggestion of Government pressure brought to bear on him, withdrawal of the letter in the absence of such pressure would make no sense at all, whereas a miffed Minister making "get back in your box" gestures would logically result in the IDA man pulling back.
This is where political correctness moves seamlessly into doctrinaire coerciveness, into a determination to stick to the ideological point no matter what objective evidence is posited which indicates that the ideological point is not applicable.
But, even if we accept Mr McGowan's removal of his letter from the record - and given the tendency of this Government to pursue and threaten to punish those who disagree with it - I would not wish to endanger a man whose commitment and competence are beyond question. Even in the absence of that letter, the fact is that the evidence that the 48-hour rule is daft piles higher all the time.
Talking to the human resources head of one multinational during the week, I was struck by his baffled disbelief. He works for a company internationally known for its enlightened employment policies which is actively planning to be here for decades, unlike many of the companies whose commitment is essentially conditional on the continuance of a favourable tax status. It is here and expanding because of the flexibility of the workforce.
"We're going to be building equipping, commissioning for five years," he told me. "During that time, we'll be taking on more and more people. Very specialised in their skills, some of them. Up to now, our workforce have co-operated willingly to make sure we meet our date, and now that willing flexibility is going to be taken from them by their own Government."
Other employers, who have managed to achieve a positive and collaborative pattern of industrial relations without involving trade unions, are outraged that exemptions can only be achieved through an approved collective agreement.
These companies believe that they either have to obey the 48-hour rule, automaton-fashion, or abandon the close working relationship they have with their own staff, because it won't be legitimate for the company and the staff, man to man and woman to woman to come to an agreement, about the 48-hour rule. They will have to introduce trade unions into what has, thus far, been an amicable, trusting and direct negotiation process.
THE American Chamber of Commerce says that in the Bill "responsibilities for time-keeping, record-keeping and `policing' are demanding on scarce resources and are overly onerous".
The civilised wordiness of this judgment was translated for me by one member of the Chamber thus: "Whoever is pushing this Bill in this form must know all the academic theories about industry and none of the reality. The Bill would have people measuring the unmeasurable, predicting the unpredictable and doing record-keeping they don't want to do, to no purpose, when they're already over-worked on tasks they're willing to be overworked on...
This Bill is demonstrative of political correctness gone mad: of the left-wing parties in Government driving the rest ahead of them into a situation only a few ideologues want, in defiance of everything needed to position this country for a strong industrial future.
It shows a dogmatic refusal to listen to reason and a rationale appropriate to realities long gone. In essence, it is the Labour Party harking back, exorcising old demons at the expense of new opportunities. Seeing dragons where dragons there be none, and feeding those dragons the freedom and flexibility which have distinguished the Irish workforce in recent years.