Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the introduction of this Bill and hope that the Government and those who support it will get behind it. I ask all voters to pay particular attention to those who vote against this Bill. Those Deputies who claim to be champions of workers' rights will be exposed as frauds in the way they vote on this Bill, in the same way that they were exposed by their response to the recent motions relating to the Debenhams workers. These are workers who I supported in Newbridge yesterday evening after the liquidator sent in a crew to pack up stock for export to England.

We are long overdue a statutory sick pay scheme in Ireland. The European picture varies greatly, from €38 a week in England, all the way up to €875 in Switzerland. In fact, the average worker across Europe receives 65% of his or her salary as pay during a week of sick leave. In Ireland, he or she receives nothing. Norway, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Malta, Croatia and Belgium pay out 100% of workers' wages.

Ensuring workers are well at work is a basic issue of safety and simply the right thing to do. When workers are unwell, they need to rest to recover. When sick workers stay at home, they reduce the spread of infection and the risk of workplace accidents and they keep others safe. We only have to look at the meat factories to see the effect that the absence of sick pay had on Covid-19 cases. We have heard of workers swigging Calpol before going to work in an effort to keep their temperatures down, i order that they could continue to earn money to provide for their families.

This Bill also calls for the extension of force majeureleave for parents and workers who will have to take time off work to look after children who must isolate due to Covid-19. This is something for which Sinn Féin has been calling in recent months. We cannot have a situation where cases of Covid-19 arise in schools and parents are left taking unpaid leave to look after their self-isolating children. We need this matter clarified for parents and this Bill does exactly that.

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