Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 19 proposes that as part of its functions the commission will be required to undertake a number of specific tasks; for example, monitoring the incidence of low pay by examining the prevalence of pay at or below two thirds of median earnings, key patterns in paid and unpaid open market internships and the effectiveness of existing policies to enforce the national minimum wage. Section 5 of the Bill introduces a new section 10(C)(4), which provides that the commission may be asked by the Minister to examine and report on matters relating generally to the functions of the commission under the Act. The Bill provides that such a request shall be made not later than the first two months of each year, apart from this year, and will be part of the commission’s work programme. I believe the legislative provision covering the work programme to be given to the commission each year should not be prescriptive and inflexible. Amendment No. 19 would tie the hands of the commission with regard to its annual work programme. A request can be made to the commission to examine and report on specific issues related to the work of the commission. While the specific topics raised in the amendment may well be worthy of examination by the commission at some point, I do not believe it is appropriate to set them down in legislation.

On amendment No. 20, section 5(5) of the Bill provides that every three years, the commission will report generally on the operation of this Act and, in particular, on the impact of any orders made under it on low pay, income distribution and employment costs. Amendment No. 20 would impose a requirement on the commission to produce such a report every year. I believe that would be quite impractical. We do not want the commission to spend all its time analysing itself and its own work. The intention behind the requirement for the commission to submit an analysis every three years of the operation of the Act and, in particular, on the impact of orders made on foot of its recommendations is to allow time for the full impact of the orders to be properly assessed. Inevitably, it take some time for the full effects of such orders to feed through and for worthwhile and reliable evidence to be analysed. In my view, to require the commission to carry out such indepth analysis of the impact of its recommendation regarding the national minimum rate on an annual basis would not be a good use of the limited resources available to it. In addition to the submission of an annual recommendation on the national minimum hourly rate of pay, the commission may be asked to examine and report on matters relating generally to its functions under the Act. We went into that in some detail earlier. The reports that the commission will make, in addition to the report it submits to the Minister accompanying its annual recommendation on the national minimum wage, will be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas.

On amendment No. 21, I agreed on Report Stage in the Seanad to introduce an amendment to provide that the Minister shall cause a copy of any report or recommendation submitted by the commission to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas not later than three months after the receipt of that report or recommendation. Amendment No. 21 would provide that the reports should be submitted within one month of their receipt. Section 6 of the Bill provides that the Minister is required to make a decision on a recommendation of the Low Pay Commission within three months of receiving it. I would not consider it appropriate to require the Minister to lay the report before the Oireachtas while consideration of the issue is still ongoing. Of course Deputies and Senators will have an opportunity to debate the reports as they are tabled and scheduled for debate in the Houses. That is correctly the case. Accordingly, I cannot accept these amendments.

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