Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As has been outlined, the requirement for continuous service will, in effect, leave hundreds of thousands of workers outside the scheme. I raised the issue with the Tánaiste. I took, possibly from his body language rather than anything he said, that he was amenable to this and heard the concern about, specifically, workers in education. It is a tactic of employers to lay off workers to keep them on their toes, and there is no point saying that it is not. I am not referring to all or most employers, but some are doing it. The need for continuous service means one is continuously having to build service.

I am not hostile to the notion of a service requirement. It is done in other legislation but this effectively puts people, specifically women, workers on low incomes and foreign-born workers, as outlined by ICTU, outside of the scheme when they need the scheme more than anyone. There are likely to be working for small employers rather than multinational corporations so are likely to be working in a place without an in-house sick pay scheme. It is a bad start to exclude these workers from the beginning.