Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Tánaiste that I will not be able to stay in the Chamber for the full debate. I have another meeting to go to. I will look back over the Official Report. Sinn Féin supports a statutory sick pay scheme. I do not think that will come as a surprise to anybody. We have argued for this for quite a long time now. The fact the Government is moving on it in any small way is proof that the trade union movement, ourselves and others have won the debate on this important workers' right.

I cannot let today pass without referring back to the previous Fine Gael and Labour Party Government in 2012. I was just reading a statement before I came in which was issued by the then Minister, Deputy Howlin, following the slashing of the paid sick leave entitlement for serving civil and public servants. He said that he believed that reducing the sick leave entitlements would result in increased productivity and reductions in absenteeism. That was deeply and grossly offensive to civil and public servants. We can all recall the conditions they were working under at that time. I was representing them at the time. They really felt that was a gross insult to them. I am really glad that now, both of the parties that formed that Government see the merits of sick leave and see how important it is.

The pandemic, as the Tánaiste said, has exposed the need for a paid sick leave scheme and, indeed, the paucity of rights for some workers in the State. The lack of a statutory sick pay scheme puts workers, the public and all of us at risk. The experience of the pandemic has shown us that access to paid sick leave is an important instrument of public health. Unfortunately, there are barriers within the proposals from Government which mean that access to the sick pay schemes will be limited and could exclude workers on low incomes.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment conducted detailed pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and produced an important report with recommendations to improve the scheme. The committee debate on the need for immediate medical certification to obtain sick pay was robust. There was broad agreement that medical certification to qualify for sick pay is an important requirement. Nobody is disputing that. It is important because it maintains the integrity of the scheme, as we know is the case in other EU countries that operate sick leave schemes. However, the concern of many members of the committee was the fact that, unlike most of our European peers, workers here do not have access to timely and free GP care. Demanding a worker immediately obtain a medical certificate in order to qualify for sick pay, in a State without timely access to free GP care, imposes a significant financial burden on a worker. This is before we factor in that it can often take a long time to get an appointment with a GP. Those living in Balbriggan could wait a week to ten days before they would even get an appointment. I am not sure how that is going to work in respect of people being able to access time off work with pay. In these circumstances, demanding immediate medical certification will result in some workers being unable to access the sick pay scheme because of a lack of access to free or subsidised GP care. This could result in employees attending work when they are sick, or else taking unpaid leave to cover the duration of their illness. This completely undermines the purpose of the scheme. In order to be fit for purpose it has to be accessible to all workers without barriers like having to pay for attending a GP. It is a stated aim of Government that free GP care is going to be rolled out at some point. I do not think there should be any difficulty in facilitating some kind of rebate for workers pending the introduction of free universal GP care.

It is a proposal from Sinn Féin that there would be free universal access to GP care in this State. That would be an important element in any sick leave arrangement. Unfortunately, the Government is not accepting this argument. I have a concern that this will result in workers attending work when they are sick, or else taking unpaid leave, which goes against the principle of the scheme.

Another recommendation of the committee which was ignored in the drafting of the Bill was that on the qualification period. I welcome the Tánaiste's remark that this is going to be kept under review. The committee recommended that all employees be entitled to statutory sick pay, regardless of their length of employment with a particular employer, where an employer can request medical certification. The qualification period in the Bill is still listed as 13 weeks continuous service. In particular, this will cause some workers who are on yearly or short-term contracts to have to restart their qualification period continuously and not be able to claim sick pay for the first 13 weeks on the job. The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment has outlined this and so too has the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

ICTU has outlined in a letter to the Government that the need for a worker to have 13 weeks' unbroken service with an employer before a sick pay scheme entitlement commences will leave hundreds of thousands of workers employed in low-paid jobs, who are mostly women and foreign-born essential workers and who routinely have their service broken by their employer, without coverage for the three months each year. As ICTU's head of social policy, Dr. Laura Bambrick, said, early-years professionals working in preschool services on a 38-week contract are forced to sign on for social welfare in the summer. There are term-time workers in education and seasonal workers in tourism and horticulture whose contracts will require them to rebuild their 13 weeks of service. The Tánaiste mentioned the need to have an established, or to establish an, employment relationship. There are workers with that established relationship who, after the breaking of their service, go back to the same employment. I am aware that the Tánaiste said he will be keeping this under review, but I would be very grateful if he concentrated his review specifically on those workers. People working in the education sector will be laid off; they know they will be. The concern is that they will have to work up 13 weeks even though they will be working with the same employer. There is no sense to that. I genuinely do not believe that is the intention of the legislation. Nothing is ever easy, as the Tánaiste knows, but this could be rectified fairly easily.

The increase in the number of sick days provided to workers year on year, as outlined in the Bill, is to be actioned by ministerial order. I understand the need for that and heard the Tánaiste state the reason. It gives flexibility and scope to respond quickly but it also allows the Minister, if he or she chooses to be obtuse, to delay increasing the number of days outlined. We should examine this because it will inhibit the performance of the scheme.

While we in Sinn Féin support a statutory sick pay scheme, the fact that the Government is not taking on board the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and trade unions shows it refuses to see things from the perspective of ordinary workers. It is the latter who will benefit, we hope. As with the remote-working Bill, it looks like the Tánaiste is trying to pull a fast one in that he appears like he is giving workers a right but is not granting it in a way that makes it accessible. I sincerely hope that is not the intention. I will work with him to ensure a swift passage of this Bill and to make improvements where necessary.

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