Mr. Paul Ginnell:

It was published last year. It involved getting a grip on the belief that there is much precarious work with many people working on zero-hour contracts in Ireland. The report was commissioned by the Department. The University of Limerick examined whether the reality is that there are many zero-hour contracts here. It concluded that there is not a massive issue with zero-hour contracts but with low-hour and "if and when" contracts. In the report it analysed where this exists across a range of sectors. It is more in play where there are different opportunities for people. The report made a number of recommendations, one of the key ones being the need to give employees more certainty. Many of the issues seem to be that employees did not know until a few days or very close to the working week what their hours would be. There were a number of recommendations for legislation and tightening regulations around "if and when" contracts, which required people to be available if and when work was available. The recommendations sought to regulate and tighten up this area. That was the key issue for workers in Ireland, as opposed to necessarily zero-hour contracts where people had no guarantee of any hours.