Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I am not quite sure the Minister grasps the point we are making and the concern we are expressing about a fundamental loophole in the entire thrust of the Bill. I will spell it out to him. Section 7(1) enunciates what I understand to be the absolute central kernel of the Bill, which is that the basic working and employment conditions to which an agency worker is entitled shall be the same as the basic working and employment conditions to which a comparable employee is entitled. However, this shall not apply in so far as it relates to pay applied to an agency worker employed by an employment agency under a permanent contract of employment. It is simple. One has equality as an agency worker but not if one is employed permanently by the agency. It is as simple as that.

This is a way around the legislation. It is a gaping hole in it. If I were an agency I would see a very simple way to get around the legislation. I would employ many people permanently, I would decide their pay and conditions and the equality demands of the legislation would not apply. There will be nothing to stop an agency permanently employing nurses and paying them two thirds or half of what nurses normally earn because as permanent employees, the provisions of the legislation will not apply. When these nurses work in a public or private hospital, they can be paid half of what nurses employed in the hospital are paid.

The only requirement is that when the employees are not on assignment, they are paid at least 50% of what they were paid on their previous assignment. What they got paid in the previous assignment could be virtually nothing or considerably less than what a comparable employee directly employed would receive. The point is that this is a gaping hole in the legislation which fundamentally subverts the point of it. It is an incentive to agencies to circumvent the demand for equality.

See this speech in context