Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With regard to section 18, the Minister has given me practically the same reply as he gave a month ago. This is a very flimsy protection, if any. Most employees in those circumstances will not wish to go to a rights commissioner or go through that process. The Minister cannot present figures to the House on how many people on zero hour contracts felt they were badly treated or treated at a whim by an employer. He has no figures whatsoever to show what the situation is. I asked him to collect statistics and he was asked by other Deputies, such as Deputy Wallace, to start collecting statistics on the situation with zero hour contracts, but he has refused to do so. We were referred to the Quarterly National Household Survey but that gives no information on how these operate. In a similar sized economy such as Scotland there are 85,000 to 100,000 workers in this situation and in the UK there are approximately 1 million workers on these contracts.

There has been an explosion of developments in the home care industry, for example, which are totally based on zero hour contracts. People are working broken shifts and at the whim of an employer, very often for the minimum wage. They are doing extremely important work for this community. The Minister has not taken responsibility for this. In fact, he is not interested in the rights of these workers or in protecting them. It is not on his agenda at all.

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