James Reilly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guest. I hope what I am hearing from the Deputy is what the Bill intends and could not be misconstrued. This only applies to cases where people have over the previous six months - perhaps that is too short and it will be a year - been working consistently longer hours than what is stated in the contract. In those circumstances, the worker can ask for a contract that more realistically reflects increased hours. It is not a case of looking for increased hours regardless of whether those hours are available. Much of the argument put forward has considered what is done if the party is not in financial difficulty. Does the party wait until it is in financial difficulty before it can prove it cannot give the extra hours and if the work is not there, must extra work be created? The Bill states very clearly that it must be proven that the work has been consistently there for a period.

Nobody here disagrees with the principle that workers should be remunerated accordingly and should not be abused. It is the abuse of the flexibility that this Bill seeks to address. There is a bit more work to do. The Minister is clearly coming with her own proposals on this so I presume this will be in committee for some time and we will have the opportunity to tease out all these issues. I do not have any specific questions but I wanted to get clarity on the issue because some of the notes available to us indicate something slightly different.