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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Sick Leave Bill. Sinn Féin fully supports the introduction of a statutory sick pay scheme. We support this Bill and have argued for such a scheme for decades. The Bill has been broadly welcomed by trade unions, many of which were instrumental in lobbying for it. As a former shop steward, I urge all workers to join a union to help them make advances in pay, terms and conditions for all workers.

We support the aim of the Bill but it is not without flaws. The lack of free and timely access to a GP is a huge problem, as previous speakers have mentioned. Immediate medical certificates from registered medical practitioners are hard to access if people cannot find a GP. Sinn Féin proposes that until there is universal GP care in this State, workers should be allowed limited periods of sick leave. It would be wrong to require GP certification, given the severe lack of doctors throughout the country. In part of my constituency, it can take over a week to get an appointment. I have raised this issue in the House several times, but the Government has turned a deaf ear to the problem. The best time to act to solve this problem was ten years ago. The second-best time is now. I again ask that the Government act as soon as possible to address the lack of doctors and dentists.

The need for medical certification in order to qualify for sick pay also places an unnecessary financial burden on workers. This will result in employees attending work when they are sick or taking unpaid leave to cover the duration of their illness, which will undermine the purpose of the sick pay scheme. Workers who are with their employers for less than 13 continuous weeks are excluded from the scheme, and this must change.

Section 10 of the Bill allows the Labour Court to exempt an employer from the obligation to pay an employee sick pay if it can prove to the Labour Court that it cannot pay it. This is an unnecessary measure. Any employer that can afford to have employees needs to prioritise the people who help it to make profits. No doubt right-wing parties in this House will argue that workers will abuse the sick pay scheme and employers should have an opt-out clause.

Some companies have claimed they cannot afford to pay things like the minimum wage. Since the National Minimum Wage Act was passed, not a single employer has ever appealed to the Labour Court and opened its books to show it cannot pay the minimum wage in an effort to receive an exemption from paying it. I, like previous speakers, remind the House that, in 2012, the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government introduced tax on illness benefit from day one. Talk about kicking people when they are down. This kind of attitude is why Sinn Féin will continue to expose their anti-worker agenda.

If we learned any lessons from the pandemic, we learned that in some sectors, workers' rights have been eroded beyond recognition. There is a reason the hospitality and caring sectors are struggling to recruit enough workers. We need to move towards a living wage economy if we are to address poverty and ensure a fair wage for all. Realistically, if we do not do that the rising tide will not lift all the boats.

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