Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Can I finish the point? The Deputy wants to have a law that penalises all the good employers. We want to allow for seasonal permits and track and monitor that to make sure everyone honours that and that protections are in place to try to prevent any move away from proper terms and conditions or poor treatment of people. Of course we will do that. We would do that for anyone who works in the State, whether for one month, two months, a year or two years. To be very clear, there will be the option to move employer. I said that at the start. I do not have the wording here but I will have it for Report Stage. We are putting that in place so people will not be tied to an employer. As the Deputy said, that will lessen the chance of poor terms and conditions. With the permit process, we try to engage with employers and have done so successfully in many cases in certain sectors. Their applications to avail of the permit process have very often strengthened the terms and conditions. In the home care sector, where there was a labour shortage, that led to new terms and conditions being brought forward there, because we refused to give a permit willy-nilly and said they had to put in place the proper terms and conditions. The seasonal employment permit will follow a similar system.