Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is an urgent need for these provisions, giving hope and dignity to a cohort of workers who need to be brought in from the cold and given some hope for the future. We in the Labour Party have certainly not changed our policy or views on if-and-when contracts. My colleague, Senator Ged Nash, will table amendments to the legislation in the Seanad to address this problem. Particularly, he will propose an amendment providing that where a period of employment has to be calculated, casual work should be included in the calculation if the casual worker was employed on a regular or systematic basis and if during the period of service the worker has a reasonable expectation of ongoing employment by the same employer. That is important. The law must have regard to the basic facts of working life such as whether the employee was offered work regularly, whether the employee generally accepted work when it was offered and whether there was a pattern or system to the work offered each week even if the amount of work offered might have varied . Those are important components and indicia of a situation that should be comprehended and captured within the Bill. That is the one amendment that I can signal already that Senator Nash will be proposing.

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