Dr. Laura Bambrick:

I apologise to Senator Ahearn if I used up all of his time in answering the detail about the difference between the working age population and workers within that population. However, I hope it helped the him in his deliberations.

When we talk about the minimum service, we absolutely acknowledge the need to establish a relationship between the employer and the worker. We accept that is a principle that is already established in other legislation. Our concern around this is the wording of continuous service. That is where it causes difficulties. Our colleagues in SIPTU, who represent the early years, drew our attention to the thousands - we are not talking about a niche group here - of workers in the early years whose employment does not exist for 52 weeks of the year. Under this existing draft legislation, they would start off again as a new entrant employee even though they have established that relationship with that employer. They would have to build it up from 1 September, not coming into qualification until December, if the 13 weeks are accepted.

Where we lie on what the appropriate minimum of service is, we wanted to emphasise that we identified the difference between what was said in the draft that was published in June that suggested six months and what is proposed now. We came out strongly against that initially, saying it was too long and it would lead to some employers letting people go before they built up their entitlement. We are glad to see it has been reduced down to 13 weeks. We want to put it on the record of this committee that it was not an oversight. We think less time is better and we are not at this stage looking for it to be narrowed down again. Our emphasis, though, is on that wording on the continuous period of employment.