Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses today. The information they have provided is very useful. I apologise as we had a series of votes in the Seanad which has meant that I have been in and out of this committee this afternoon.

On the question of evidence, it is coincidental that the four members left in the room, apart from the Chairman, are all from Limerick. I am aware from my previous job as a trade union official that there is not a single hotel in Limerick that does not offer a standard template of if-and-when contracts. That is their template. If one is offered a job tomorrow the only contract available is an if-and-when contract. The evidence is in front of us for those of us from Limerick.

The notion of enforced flexibility goes to the heart of some of the issues that we have talked about today. I noticed that the hospitality industry in particular is highlighted. We have quite rightly heard about the impact of this on people's lives, but what is the overall macro-economic impact of having whole industries that depend on this enforced flexibility, where from one week to the next workers do not know how many hours of work they are going to get? Perhaps Professor Wickham could comment on that. It could have quite a detrimental impact, because if I do not know how much money I will get next week I am unlikely to purchase the item that I wanted to buy for my kid, or I might not be able to plan a bigger purchase for my family because I do not have that security looking forward. Sometimes it is important to look at the bigger picture in terms of the economic benefits to the economy as a whole if we can eliminate the rapid rise in precarious work that has happened over the last decade.