Mr. David Gibney:

I wish to comment on Deputy Tóibín's argument about underemployment and using the word "underemployment". He also referred slightly to who is behind statistics and that sometimes people get caught up in words like "underemployment" that do not explain exactly what it means. The real term should be "involuntary part-time". They are not workers who work part-time. They are workers who seek more hours but cannot access them. I will explain the impact such a situation has on workers. At present, 147,000 workers in this economy work involuntary part-time and cannot access more hours because of a number of reasons, which I will go into shortly. The current figure of 147,000 represents a 60% increase on the number for 2008. The most recent statistics show that as a percentage of the entire workforce, we used to have 0.4% of the workforce as involuntary part-time or underemployed but that percentage has risen to 7.8%. Ireland was the best country in the EU 15 countries for underemployment, but now we are the second worst in that group. The reason is twofold. The first reason is a lack of statutory protections. As Mr. Light alluded to earlier, the part-time worker directive was never fully implemented. That means workers do not have a code of practice in place at the moment to seek more hours when they become available on a shop floor, for instance.

Other EU countries have a contract called an honest contract. For example, if a person gets a ten-hour contract but is regularly asked to work 15 hours, or one is regularly working 25 hours, the excess hours above ten hours are paid at a rate of time and a half. That means an employer is incentivised into giving his or her employee an honest contract. That means it would be cheaper for employers to increase a worker's hours to 25 rather than pay the 15 extra hours worked at a time and a half rate of pay.

As people will be aware, Ireland also has very weak collective bargaining laws. As Mr. Light mentioned earlier, that has led to a situation of collective bargaining agreement and negotiation rights with employers.

Not only have we managed to win €30 million in pay increases, as mentioned earlier, but the increase to the State was €3 million, when one takes into account employer PRSI contributions, not to mention the reductions in social welfare transfers. We also said in our submission that there is increased revenue through VAT, income tax and employees' PRSI. Those workers in a position to bargain collectively and get better pay and terms and conditions have made a massive contribution to the State.

At the moment we have neither strong statutory protections for workers nor full collective bargaining rights. The 15 other EU states are ahead of us in respect of involuntary part-time positions, because they offer at least either strong statutory protection or access to robust collective bargaining mechanisms. The committee might consider that.