Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think I need two minutes just to reiterate what I have already said. I refer back to the two specific items that two Deputies raised. The penalisation provisions in the Organisation of Working Time Act, as amended by this Bill, will protect Dunnes Stores workers. There is already protection under the industrial relations legislation against penalisation of workers for being trade union activists. Every activation measure we take in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is to try to help people who are underemployed be more employed if that is what they want. All the supports and services available from the Department, whether it is working family payment or jobseeker's payment on a three by two basis, are provided to facilitate a minimum standard of living.

The most important thing for us to do is to ensure people have as much work as they possibly can. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure people who are in precarious work have more stability and security. While I do not have a difficulty in principle with the amendment made on Committee Stage, it would have required me to go back to public consultation. We probably would have had to go back to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection. We would have had to consult all the Deputy's favourite best friends, IBEC, ISME, the retail sector, Mandate and Patricia King of ICTU. We would have had a full conversation on the actual implications of what a properly worded, detailed prescriptive amendment would mean to the people who would be impacted before we could have brought it back here. Then I would have had to go to the Attorney General to have it drafted and present it to Cabinet again. The Bill has dragged on for far too long. As Deputy Brady said, if we had €1 for every time we mentioned Dunnes Stores in this Chamber in the past couple of months, we would all be rich.

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