Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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107. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation further to Parliamentary Question No. 469 of 25 March 2014, the manner in which his Department is keeping the use of zero-hour contracts under review. [17403/14]

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Last month, Deputy Wallace and I asked the Minister about zero-hour contracts, which are prevalent in the fast food, health care, home care and retail industries. To form a basic point of departure, we asked him to start collecting statistics on zero-hour contracts through the Central Statistics Office, CSO. I asked the Taoiseach the same question. Many people consider these contracts to be a form of bonded labour, as employees have no choice whatsoever. They are unsure of which days they will work or for how many hours. They are at the whim of employers. The Minister is presiding over this situation.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Zero-hour contracts are matters of contract law. They must be entered into freely by the employer and employee and cannot be forced on an employee. While the CSO does not collect data on zero-hour contracts, this does not mean that there is no information available regarding them.

The National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, which is within the remit of my Department, has a team of inspectors who enter workplaces on a daily basis. NERA also has an information service that provides information in response to queries from employees and employers on issues of concern. My officials are in regular contact with NERA with a view to ascertaining emerging issues that may need to be addressed from a policy perspective. Zero-hour contracts have not arisen as an issue in this context.

It must be noted that much of the media coverage regarding zero-hour contracts relates to the situation in the UK. It is possible to distinguish the position in Ireland on zero-hour contracts from that of the UK by virtue of the fact that, in section 18 of the Organisation of Working Time Act, we have a specific protection for employees on zero-hour contracts. There is no equivalent provision in UK legislation. In the UK, employees on zero-hour contracts are only paid for time spent working. If they are not given hours by their employers, they receive no compensation.

In Ireland, the zero-hour protection set out in section 18 covers situations where, for example, an employee is sent home if work is quiet or is requested to be available for work and is not, on the day, asked to work. Where an employee suffers a loss by not working hours he or she was requested to work or to be available to work, the zero-hour provisions of the Act ensure that he or she is compensated for 25% of the time that he or she is required to be available or 15 hours, whichever is the lesser. Of course, the level of compensation available under section 18 may be impacted if the employee gets some work.

In addition to protections under section 18, the protections in the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 and other employment rights legislation that apply to part-time employees also apply to employees on zero-hour contracts.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

The foregoing demonstrates that existing protections in Irish employment rights legislation for persons on zero hours contracts are better than protections in some other EU countries. Finally, it is worth noting that under EU law, zero hours contracts are in themselves permitted as long as they are used in a way that respects the relevant provisions of EU law, with particular reference to workers' health and safety.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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With regard to section 18, the Minister has given me practically the same reply as he gave a month ago. This is a very flimsy protection, if any. Most employees in those circumstances will not wish to go to a rights commissioner or go through that process. The Minister cannot present figures to the House on how many people on zero hour contracts felt they were badly treated or treated at a whim by an employer. He has no figures whatsoever to show what the situation is. I asked him to collect statistics and he was asked by other Deputies, such as Deputy Wallace, to start collecting statistics on the situation with zero hour contracts, but he has refused to do so. We were referred to the Quarterly National Household Survey but that gives no information on how these operate. In a similar sized economy such as Scotland there are 85,000 to 100,000 workers in this situation and in the UK there are approximately 1 million workers on these contracts.

There has been an explosion of developments in the home care industry, for example, which are totally based on zero hour contracts. People are working broken shifts and at the whim of an employer, very often for the minimum wage. They are doing extremely important work for this community. The Minister has not taken responsibility for this. In fact, he is not interested in the rights of these workers or in protecting them. It is not on his agenda at all.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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On the issue of data, NERA carried out an inspection in respect of one of the companies to which the Deputy and others have referred. In that inspection none of the staff was on a zero hour contract when the inspection was carried out. It is not that nothing is happening to identify the situation; things are happening.

Regarding the other issue of people in the caring community, the Labour Court issued a recommendation last September concerning home helps employed by the HSE. This recommendation was accepted by both sides as a binding recommendation of the court. The HSE is proceeding to give effect to the recommendation, which will result in approximately 10,000 home helps receiving annualised hour contracts from the HSE in place of zero hour contracts.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Will that include subcontractors? There is a huge range of subcontractors across the home care sector and I have received complaints about the conditions of those workers. At the very least, could the Minister and the Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny, with whom I have also raised this matter, not begin to collect the statistics and give us the facts? As a result we would know what the situation is not just in one company or in one instance, but across the economy, and how many workers are on zero hour contracts and the conditions under which they are working. Then, perhaps, the Minister could bring legislation to the House.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I will have to find out for the Deputy whether that ruling of the Labour Court applies to the people who are contracted by the HSE. I do not have that information to hand.

Collecting data is a matter for the Central Statistics Office, CSO. It surveys full-time and part-time employment. Of the 61,000 additional people at work, 90% are in full-time employment. There is a pattern. Early in the recovery we saw a large number of part-time positions being filled but more recently, as progress is being made, predominantly full-time jobs are being created across all sectors of the economy. There is some data from the CSO on part-time working, but not specifically on zero hour contract working.