David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do. I am not in favour of any legislation which places a difficulty on employers, especially small employers. We were very conscious when drafting this Bill that it seeks to achieve a balance. At the moment there is no balance, because workers do not have the right to have a contract reflective of their hours. Only in circumstances where an employer refuses to grant permission, at the request of the employee, for the person to have a contract reflective of their hours, would it go before the Workplace Relations Commission in the first place. To me, that would be highly unusual. If people are working for 30 or 40 hours over a period of six months - I know the Government has said that timeframe is too short - or longer they should have a contract that reflects that. We should move to a situation where workers working an average number of hours over an agreed time period have that reflected. If an employer refuses, there must be good grounds for a refusal. In any situation, and it is not just this situation, where there is conflict between an employee and employer, there must be adjudication.

The Workplace Relations Commission was set up with the support of all members of this committee and all parties and none because we need industrial conflict resolution processes. I do not believe it is unfair or unreasonable that the Workplace Relations Commission would be asked to adjudicate. I do not believe that it is unfair or unreasonable that an employer would have to give a good reason, because we are not saying that they can give a bad reason, as to why they would not accede to the request that is made. In any event, just to be very clear, all we are saying here is that the industrial relations body, which is the Workplace Relations Commission, would be the adjudicating body.

If anybody here, including Teachta Collins, feels that there is a better way of doing it that would be less onerous on an employer, we are all ears. We will support any amendments which are tabled that would improve the Bill. The Deputy made the point in his Second Stage contribution, and I want to welcome it, that he supported the broad thrust of the Bill, and what we were trying to do. I acknowledge and respect the Deputy has genuine concerns about the impact that it could have on small businesses or businesses generally. If there is a different way, we would work with members of this committee to make that happen. We have to be reasonable as well and acknowledge that there must be adjudication processes. There must be some conditionality otherwise a Bill or measure would not be worth the paper it is written on. We must have some level of conditionality and we have sought to be as fair as possible in our Bill. If there are alternative ways, I would like to hear them, and I am sure my own party members in this committee would be supportive of amendments that make sense in that regard.