Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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As I said in my opening statement, the Government statement of priorities focused exclusively on the area of zero-hour contracts, but zero-hour contracts do not exist in the same way in Ireland as they do in the UK because of a provision of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. We want to capture the reality and data, quantitative and qualitative, on low-hour contracts, which we defined as under eight hours. In many cases, those who are working in the home help sector, for example, and particularly in the voluntary sector, would be on contracts of under eight hours. A Labour Court agreement was reached a couple of years ago with the HSE and SIPTU regarding contractual arrangements for HSE home help workers who, I seem to recall, have more certainty over their contracts. That has made a very important contribution to the employment circumstances of HSE home help workers. We extended it to low-hour contracts as well, to capture as much information as we could about precarious and non-standard work.

One of the issues is that we do not have a common European definition of low-hours work while employment rights vary across the European Union. Deputy Calleary asked me about the practice in analogous European states. By and large, we found that in very progressive European states sectoral employment agreements, for example, take precedence. The University of Limerick recommendations suggested that if sectoral agreements can be reached, applying right across the sector - I have provided for those opportunities in the Industrial Relations Act 2015 - they could supersede many of the recommendations we may introduce over the next period of time in respect of how we deal with the whole area of "if and when" contracts. A considerable number of European countries are well advanced in terms of these protections, but we should also point out that a relatively low number of employees in the Irish context are on low-hour contracts, according to the Quarterly National Household Survey, QNHS. We are talking about a very small percentage. About 87% of Irish employees are on contracts of 19 hours and over. The bulk of those are on what we would consider to be fairly standard full-time contracts, even in an ever-changing world.

The report recognises the need for ongoing data collection. I said earlier, and Deputy Tóibín has said on a number of occasions on the record of the House, that there is a requirement to capture discrete data, referencing low hours in particular. That is a recommendation the University of Limerick made which we need to take very seriously. If we are to respond in a comprehensive way on a policy basis to the challenge we face as an economy and as a society, we need as strong an evidence base as we can have. It is important to reflect on that as well. On the figures regarding the prevalence of regular low-hours work, the QNHS figures used by the University of Limerick suggested that 2% of employees - that is probably about 29,000 - are on one to eight hours per week and they are largely to be found in the accommodation, food and retail, and education sectors. About 98,000 - 6% - are on nine to 18 hours. They are, again, largely to be found in the accommodation, retail, education and health care sectors.