Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I presume that if the Minister had taken action and commenced some procedure on the basis of the presumption that the statutory instrument would not be annulled by the Houses and it happened to be annulled, this means that what was done will not be undone. I think that is what it means in English, so we will not argue about it. It is unlikely to happen anyway.

We come now to the substantive issue in the legislation before us, the amendment regarding sick leave. After the debate we had earlier the Minister will understand the arguments of different Members because we are essentially dealing with the same point. I might differ with other Members of the Opposition but I agree with the Minister on the need to curtail the sick leave bill and to bring it into line with what is the norm in Irish society. It should not be a standard thing for people to say, "I feel like doing a few sickies". That phrase should not be part of the Irish lexicon from now on. In addition, even though the Opposition should not necessarily look for trouble, I support cutting the six month period to three months for both full pay and half pay. The difficulty I have is with some of the details about it.

The retrospection is a big issue. I refer to it as retrospection, but many people would disagree with me on this. It is unusual for the House to pass a measure that has a retrospective effect. However, it is to do with the nature of the sick leave scheme. I have a copy of the circular issued last July to personnel officers containing a notification of the changes. It states: "Because we calculate sick leave on the basis of a 4 year rolling period (i.e. counting backwards from the latest day of absence) the changes being introduced from 1 January 2014 may result in staff being on half pay on their next sick absence if they have had more than 3 months absence on full pay in the previous 4 years." That introduces an element of retrospection. It counts back for the number of sick leave days.

Some people would say this House should not pass anything with retrospective effect. The essence of every legislative measure is that it is the law from when it is passed, but one cannot go back and change the law that previously existed. However, in effect, this measure has a retrospective impact. The Minister might be surprised to find that I agree with the principle that there must be some retrospective impact with this. Some would say there should not be, but there should be some look back. Otherwise, one would essentially be wiping everybody's previous sick leave record clean, with it starting again from next year under the new regulations. It would be four years before the four year rolling clock would catch up to reach the current position and it would be four years before the full potential savings could be achieved. Some Members will respond by saying "So be it", but we are in a difficult financial situation and there must be some recognition of the sick leave taken prior to the commencement of this new legislation. To ignore it would be unfair to the taxpayer and to the hundreds of thousands of people in employment in the private sector who do not have a similar four year rolling arrangement for the amount of paid sick leave they receive. The Minister might not like it but I can see the logic in him doing that.

I will now turn to my difficulties with the section as amended by this amendment. I do not think the Minister grasped what I meant - perhaps he was not listening carefully - when I said the legislation was not gender proofed. Of course, there is no phrase in the legislation singling out females for special treatment as opposed to males, or vice versa. There cannot be. Gender proofing means assessing the impact legislation will have on the genders. Without reference to gender in the legislation, the practical implementation of this legislation will have a greater and more disproportionate impact on women than on men. It is not written in the legislation but that will be the effect, as sure as night follows day.

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