Ms Maeve McElwee:

Certainly. It is required in professions where particular skills need to be reserved. I will give two examples that come to mind. In the first example, one is running a pharmacy and is therefore obliged to have a qualified pharmacist on site. An issue might arise that means one has to ensure somebody is reserved for some hours to cover a potential upcoming absence - perhaps a pharmacist is on call for a family emergency. One might not necessarily have a vacancy at the time, but one needs to ensure someone is available. One could use a zero-hour contract appropriately in such circumstances by calling on an individual if he or she is needed to fill in.

The second example I would like to give relates to manufacturing. A manufacturing company might sometimes reserve hours with a skilled technician, such as a welder, in case it wins a particular contract. It might not know whether that contract is coming in, but in order to achieve that contract it needs to be able to demonstrate that it has the skill set at its disposal to fulfil the contract. In such circumstances, it might decide to reserve the hours on a zero-hour contract. We would say that zero-hour contracts tend to be much more efficient and useful when they are availed of in those types of scenarios than when they are availed of instead of low-hours or variable-hours contracts.