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

I want to reject that as well. It is constantly being said that the employer is paying. We could equally say that they have not been paying for decades and that they have been getting away with it for decades. It does not need to be referenced in that way. For this to work, we must not come at it from the perspective of this being some kind of gift that is being bestowed on workers. Rather, it is an instrument of public health. I am worker, just like everyone else in this place. I do not want people coming into work if they are sick or to feel an obligation to come into work if they are sick. That has to be the starting point. There is this constant reference to the fact the employer is going to paying. There is, absolutely, but they have been getting away with it for years.

We need to come at this from a public health intervention perspective, which is what it is. I believe this is where this Bill has come from. When listening to members of the Government when they speak about this, they speak about the need for us to regard sick pay as a public health intervention. This is not an optional extra. This is not a gift that is to be given to workers. Nobody wants to be sick or to be off on sick leave. However, they want the comfort of knowing that they will not end up in the poorhouse just because they are sick. Equally, their co-workers want the comfort of knowing that nobody is going to be dragging themselves into work and infecting everybody else because they will have this safety net.

If we come at it from the perspective of it being in the public interest and public good, then I see no reason amendment No. 11 should not be accepted. It would tilt the balance back in favour of the worker because that is who need to look after in this instance.

In regard to employers who cannot pay, the Minister of State knows as well as I do that there is the same provision in the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 for employers to go to Labour Court. The very same employers who said that it would put them out of business and all of that are not going to the Labour Court. Therefore, maybe businesses are a little bit more resilient to absorbing these costs than we give them credit for or, indeed, than they sometimes give themselves credit for.

However, this is very much in the public interest and we should be coming at it from that perspective.