Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I hope Deputy Collins will welcome the collective bargaining legislation the Minister, Deputy Bruton, and I have been working on for some time now and which will be published shortly and made available to all Deputies. I look forward to her input on that because that is about levelling the playing field and trying to create a fairer future in the workplace. We can discuss issues around relatively modest pay increases for workers across the economy and so on, but this, and the suite of industrial relations legislation we have been working on for some time, is about trying to ensure there is a more level playing field that can transform the dynamic of industrial relations in this country and achieve the kind of things to which Deputy Collins is referring.

There may be some confusion about the role of the low pay commission in regard to zero-hour contracts. There is a zero-hour contracts study going on at the moment, but the low pay commission was established on an interim basis a few months ago, and will be set up on a statutory basis, primarily to look at issues relating to the annual rate of the national minimum wage, although it will also be looking at other issues. I assure Deputy Collins that I am concerned to see the rise of insecure work in any format. This is an international phenomenon and this study, which we have commissioned, is the first major study of its kind, which should give us very useful information regarding the reality on the ground and what the Government can do to ensure a fairer workplace.

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