Ms Patricia King:

From our point of view, waiting days are a bit of a nonsense in the overall scheme of things. I took part in all of the discussions with Government officials in respect of all of this when the pandemic first occurred. The Deputy will be aware that it adjusted the six waiting days that were in place and so on and so forth. The collectively bargained agreements contain a variety of provisions with regard to waiting days. The Deputy will be well aware of the provisions, for instance, in the public sector sick pay agreements and so on, where it just does not occur, full stop. If people become eligible to receive payment for illness, then they go into that scheme and that is how there are paid for the duration of the illness.

From our point of view, ideally there should be no waiting days. When people are ill, they have to have income. One clear issue arising in the pandemic was that people were going to work when they were unwell because they could not afford to stay at home and waiting days were a contributory factor. That is the reality. As waiting days mean that someone will receive no income, when a person is on very low wages and every cent counts it can therefore have quite disastrous effects.

From our point of view in the consultation, we are trying to get the point across that illness benefit should cover the illness because the illness does not wait for a day, two days or three days. From that point of view, the illness benefit should do what it needs to do which is cover the worker for the period he or she is out sick. On some occasions there will be some differences. Currently the system is quite onerous if one talks about State payments.

One of the benefits of an employer having an obligation is that whatever we agree at the end of this, the employer will continue to pay for a period. In other words, the issue of waiting should no longer be appropriate or should not even arise, quite candidly, if we get into that scenario. If we take a person on maternity leave, for example, the day that person goes on maternity leave she gains the benefit of the maternity leave. In many cases, as the Deputy will know well because she negotiated many of them, workers have top ups from employers. They also apply from day one and then the State payment kicks in, so there are a whole variety of ways and means to do this. That comes into play in the construction sector where sick pay is on a daily basis.

We are in a public consultation process and hopefully we are going to be engaging in many discussions under the labour employer economic forum, LEEF, system with the Department on what the final outcome of this will be. From a starting point, the illness benefit should do what it is meant to do. The employer has an obligation and a break in wages should not occur if that obligation is met. That is our point of view on it.