Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputies will be pleased to hear that this morning the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, received approval from Cabinet to publish the employment (miscellaneous provisions) Bill. The Bill will be published in the next few days. It delivers on the programme for Government commitment to tackle some of the problems caused by casualisation of work and to strengthen the regulation of precarious work. The key objective of this important legislation is to improve security and predictability of working hours for employees on insecure contracts and those with variable hours and to outlaw zero-hour contracts in most cases. Cabinet approval for that Bill was granted this morning and we expect the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, will publish it in the next few days.

Some of the commentary and analysis regarding changes to work patterns is not fully borne out by the facts. In the last number of quarters, the number of employees in part-time employment has fallen whereas the number of employees in full-time employment is increasing. That is not surprising. Initially, when a country comes out of a recession, when it comes out of a severe unemployment crisis, new part-time jobs are created and over time those part-time jobs become full time, and that is why the number of part-time jobs is now falling and the number of full-time jobs is now increasing again. We need to bear in mind that part-time work is not necessarily always a bad thing. Some people want to work part time and have their own reasons for doing so.

In terms of temporary employment, the most recent statistics show that the percentage of employees in temporary employment stood at 7.2% in 2008. That rose to 8.7% in 2011 and has fallen back to 7.1% in 2016. While the number of temporary employees overall may have increased because there are more people working, the percentage of the workforce in temporary employment is lower than it was eight years ago. That is an important fact for people to be aware of.

Similarly, the number of employees who are self-employed is increasing. As employment increases, as the population grows, more people establish their own businesses or professions. The percentage of the total workforce in self-employment was 10.3% in 2008. That rose to 11.3% in 2011 and fell back to 10.4% in 2016. The percentage of the workforce in self-employment is only 0.1% higher than it was eight years ago. These are facts that people need to be aware of.

Of course, the numbers are increasing because there are more people in the country and there are more people at work, but the percentage of the workforce who are self-employed, in part-time employment or in temporary employment is not increasing. Being in part-time employment or being self-employed is not a bad thing. In my view, it can be good for many people.

There are different ways to deal with the changes in the world of work. Thirty or 40 years ago, people might have hoped to get a job with a company, to be made permanent, to stay working with that company for their entire lives and to have a pension paid for by that company. Work has changed fundamentally in the past 30 or 40 years. I believe most people now in their 20s or 30s will work for a number of different employers. They may be self-employed for a period of time - often by choice, sometimes perhaps not. They will probably work in more than one or two countries. What we need to do is approach that in a modern way. One can try the reaction, which is to try and ban new forms of employment which is not the right way to go, or restrict immigration or restrict people from travelling to take up jobs elsewhere, or one can embrace the fact that economies evolve and societies change and adapt labour laws accordingly, not to ban these new forms of employment but to provide better social protection ensuring that everyone is covered by the social insurance system. That is why we have extended so many benefits to the self-employed that were not there previously. It is also why we want to bring in auto-enrolment for pensions to ensure that everyone pays in to a pension fund and can carry that pension fund with him or her as he or she moves from job to job, in and out of employment and self-employment and from country to country.

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