Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 11 April 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Banded Hours Contract Bill 2016: Discussion (Resumed)

4:00 pm

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That was not the nature of the question. I fully agree with the principles of what the witness just espoused. People doing the same work, whether students or not, should get paid the same. The question was more about the flexibility that both students and employers would seek, though some have abused that arrangement, as we have all acknowledged here. There are students who would value that flexibility of being able to work a few hours during the week, a few more at the weekends and maybe not work a few weeks when they have exams coming up. They are then able to work a lot more during the holiday period. The perspective of how this Bill impacts on them is where the employers were coming from, or so I thought. It is not that it would result in paying people less, rather that by having a less than flexible piece of legislation that would not cater for that could disadvantage these people. That was the way I understood it and the concern I would have. We all agree that we need to tighten up the legislation because the abuse of workers that is clearly taking place in certain instances by some employers who have been anything but scrupulous in their application of fair law needs to be addressed. At the same time, I do not want to create a hammer to break a nut. That is the concern.

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