Ms Maeve McElwee:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to make a presentation to the committee. The Irish Business and Employers' Confederation, IBEC, represents more than 7,500 businesses operating in Ireland, from the very largest to the very smallest. In sharing our thoughts on the Bill, I do not intend to go through the detail of our submission or the answers, which have been circulated to members, nor do we intend to get into any theoretical or ideological discourse. We shall highlight the issue of why we do not believe this Bill is going to work in the spirit in which it is intended. We believe that we understand the intention of the Bill is to encourage secure employment. Regrettably, we do not feel that this legislation is going to satisfy that desire. We are of the view that it has the potential to undermine more and secure employment.

We shall look at a couple of examples of the realities of how people work and the flexibilities that are required on a day-to-day basis. Consider the position regarding technology companies such as start-ups, whereby we are trying to encourage more entrepreneurship and engagement. We see situations where people look for the next new client and for opportunities. As they pitch for that business, they have an opportunity to perhaps take somebody on with a certain number of hours but the employer has no idea what the commitment is going to be or whether that contract is going to come to fruition. The restrictions proposed in this proposed legislation with regard to flexibility are such that, rather than adding more hours that may not be flexible in the longer term, an employer is much more likely to look at a contracting-out situation as opposed to hiring more employees.

I will give another example regarding flexibility. As we move towards more flexible working opportunities, people are looking for more opportunities to balance their work and personal lives. Let us consider, for example, the necessity of the maternity leave contract. This is a situation where a person is paid a top-up by her employer. It may be a small employment, a great job and the employer may be keen to have that person back on foot of the investment made in her. Over the course of the maternity leave, somewhere between eight and 12 months potentially, colleagues take up the work. When that person comes to return to work eight or 12 months later, we would have a situation whereby the proposed legislation, in its current for, might actually have the opposite effect. As a result, those flexibilities to allow people to engage and take more time off - and to balance the latter - would not be sufficiently elastic to allow those opportunities to come through. Another example is students who work and have very flexible opportunities to be able to offer their labour to the market. An employer is going to look at a situation and say they can offer certain hours now. Unfortunately, the past hours are not necessarily a great predictor of the future. What has happened previously does not always tell us what is going to happen next. For example, an employer might hire a student and six months into the term of employment, the student might state that his or her lecture timetable will allow him or her to offer the employer more hours. The employer, however, will not accept the offer on the basis that an obligation or liability would be created within the business without him or her necessarily knowing - or maybe knowing - what the peaks and trends in the market are going to be or knowing that he or she is not going to be able to maintain or facilitate those hours for the employee in the future. When we look to see what is the intent behind this proposed legislation, I do not believe that these potential situations are secure employment. It certainly does not provide opportunities or allow additional opportunities to come through.

IBEC is concerned about the ratcheting up of hours and of banded hours. We are concerned about such an increase in hours where an employer is obliged to demonstrate that the reason they are not giving more hours is because they are in severe financial difficulties. Members should speak to businesses in their communities and ask them is this appropriate that they should be obliged to publicly state "I will be in severe financial difficulties if I have to offer these additional hours". That is actually not a very good way to save their employment, their businesses and the ongoing employment opportunities for employees within their sectors.

Employers being obliged to appeal to the precariousness of their own finances is clearly an unintended consequence of what this Bill would bring through.

I will give a final example. Let us take a nursing home under the implications of this Bill. Obviously, there are different intensities of care required at all times. There can be very difficult and harsh winters and the recruitment of additional resources can be required to support the needs of the business. As the crisis passes and one moves into summer and a potentially milder autumn, over that period of months the business has actually contracted in more hours than it might have necessarily needed in the longer term. With the inflexibilities this Bill would provide, there would be no way of being able to manage those hours and the business would be left in a situation in which there would be more hours available than the work required. For any manager, that is not a sustainable way to be able to run a business. Into the longer term, no business is going to be able to manage in that way. Rather than creating secure employment, that incentivises the employer to have two employees with fewer hours rather than one employee with the opportunity to be able to have a greater amount of secure hours.

The key point is that predictable flexibility is really what any business needs to survive. We believe this Bill will encourage more sporadic and insecure employment than what we believe to be its intention, which was more secure employment. We suggest the ability to flex working hours in a more predictable and appropriate way is a better way for people to be employed, to be able to share their labour in the labour force and to be able to flex that labour up and down. It is important to note the University of Limerick report demonstrated that only 2.6% of employees in the labour market are on variable part-time contracts. This is highly significant legislation with huge unintended consequences to deal with an issue that perhaps would be better addressed through monitoring and compliance.