Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----but I want to stress I was not being personal. From the point of view of the issue at stake, the amendment is indefensible because it fails to identify, as did the Minister in her response, what mechanism will be in place, if this amendment is passed, to protect against an employer deciding to victimise a part-time existing employee by not giving him or her the additional hours because he or she has asserted his or her rights in some way, has been a union activist or some other reason with which an employer has taken umbrage.

Alternatively, the employee may have built up seniority and have a pay level or in some cases pay agreements which apply to him or her but not to people who are employed later on - new entrants are whatever. The Minister's amendment, if passed, will not provide that protection. That protection will be gone and employers, whether there are few or many, who choose to victimise people in that way will be able to do so.

The Minister has a case to answer in defending her amendment. The example Kevin Foley gave is not a good one for all the reasons already stated. However, if there is a genuine concern, everybody here has said there would be no difficulty in amending what is the fundamentally correct principle in the existing Bill with the added provision about appropriate qualifications. The onus is on the Government to do that and not to press an amendment that removes a protection from workers in a precarious position. The Minister needs to consider that. There is no need for this amendment. Whatever weakness the Minister can argue is in the existing wording, that weakness will be far bigger if the Minister's amendment passes and an important protection for workers will be removed.

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