Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

The entire rationale behind the use of agency workers has been to casualise employment, with such workers subject to various employment abuses. We have been slow enough in bringing the Bill forward and it comes on foot of an EU directive. Rather than being minimalist in its provisions, we have an opportunity to ensure agency workers will be treated properly and equally with the employees they work beside on a daily basis. Amendments Nos. 4, 6 and 10 seek to meet this objective. The legislation should ensure agency workers will be employed on the same basis as full-time employees. Sick pay, pensions, holiday entitlements, top-up maternity payments, work-related allowances and so on should be encompassed within it. What has been happening in the State and throughout the Europeand Union is that because agency workers effectively have few or no rights, their own positions have become vulnerable and they, in turn, have been used to undermine the position of full-time employees and move towards a model of employment that is casual and part-time. The opportunity should be taken in the Bill to act as comprehensively as possible in affording the same level of protection to agency workers as to full-time employees.

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