Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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43. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection when she envisages a ban will be introduced on zero-hour contracts, and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26578/18]

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Paul Murphy has been given permission to take Deputy Barry's question.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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When does the Minister envisage a ban on zero-hour contracts will be introduced given their impact on people's lives, the inability to plan their lives, the impact on people's mental health, the inability to access mortgages and the fact that they are symptomatic of the rise in precarity?

I ask the question particularly in the context of the Lloyds Pharmacy dispute. We have some Lloyds workers with us in the Visitors Gallery. Despite the denials and the propaganda by the company, they are affected by zero-hour contracts, which is one of the issues in the dispute.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017 completed Committee Stage in the Dáil on 17 May and is back for Report Stage next Tuesday and Wednesday. The Bill includes a provision to prohibit zero-hour contracts except in cases of genuine casual work, emergency cover or short-term relief work for the employer. It is worth recalling that the University of Limerick study, commissioned by the former Minister of State, Senator Gerald Nash, found that zero-hour contracts were not prevalent in Ireland. The provisions in this Bill dealing with zero-hour contracts will help to ensure this remains the position.

It is important to understand, however, we are not saying in the Bill that all casual or flexible working arrangements are wrong and should be prohibited. On the contrary, flexible working arrangements are an essential requirement for any modern economy. I note the University of Limerick study acknowledged that genuine flexible working arrangements can be mutually beneficial for both employees and employers. To prohibit outright all casual work or all flexible working arrangements would have very serious unintended consequences for many businesses and service providers across the country. Our schools and hospitals, for example, simply could not function. Businesses in the retail, hospitality or care sectors would be unable to operate without the ability employ certain staff on flexible working arrangements to satisfy peak demands and fill staffing gaps on a short-term basis.

The Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill is important legislation. It contains a range of measures designed to improve the security and predictability of working hours for employees on insecure contracts and those working variable hours. We will continue to work with colleagues on all sides of the House, as we have done to date, to progress this Bill as quickly as possible so we can deliver legislation that is fair, balanced and works in the best interests of both employees and employers.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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I thank the Minister. To ban zero-hour contracts except in the case of casual work defeats the purpose as it is precisely the case that these people are abusing the notion of casual work. To give a concrete example from Lloyds, Mr. Pat. Watt, the marketing and sales director of Lloyds, has issued a couple of YouTube propaganda videos, and he said: "Throwing around terms like-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I would refrain from mentioning the names of those who are not in the House. Deputy Murphy knows that is not permissible.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Okay. He said: "Throwing around terms like zero-hour contracts, which we do not and never have had, is deliberately divisive". However, if one speaks to the workers directly, as I did, it is a different story. Mandate has produced a copy of the contract on its website, which states: "Your normal hours of work are flexible as agreed with your manager, spread over up to 5 days between Monday and Sunday and may include late night and weekend work." There are no guaranteed hours and, in any normal language, that is a zero-hour contract. Imagine trying to plan life like that, when a worker only knows a few days in advance how many hours and what hours they are going to do the following week.

Zero-hour contracts are just one of many issues in that dispute. It is about low pay, the absence of a real payscale, the absence of a proper sick pay scheme, the absence of annual leave and the attempt to stop workers organising in their union. It is a vital strike.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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All of the issues the Deputy has just outlined will not be legal when we pass the new Bill because of all of the other sections of the Bill, not because of permitting casualised work in certain exceptional circumstances. It is because of the banded hours and the look-back period that will be introduced, as well a whole range of measures within the Bill that will prohibit what the Deputy has just described from happening in any organisation. However, it is important to remember there are benefits to having certain casualised work.

To give one example, in a recent high profile case an RTÉ reporter was found to have been discriminated against by being dismissed on the grounds of age while she was on a casual contact when presenting a radio programme. The Workplace Relations Commission found in her favour and she was awarded €50,000. Similarly, cover is necessary in an emergency and, for example, fire brigades have auxiliary firefighters on call for urgent situations. Obviously, not every situation is an emergency, so cover is also needed for routine absences. For example, transport companies would have to employ a relief driver during exceptionally busy periods or to cover the annual leave of other employees. Pharmacies cannot open unless there is a pharmacist present so if a pharmacist rings in sick, they have to be able to provide locums. There are a number of genuine exceptional circumstances that permit what we and the Workplace Relations Commission call casual work. To prohibit that in any way, shape or form would shut down certain industries, which is certainly not what we want to do.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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The company involved in these practices of gross exploitation of its workers is not some small pharmacy. It is part of the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world, McKesson Corporation, which has an annual revenue of €169 billion, more than double the revenue of the Irish State. Workers themselves organising is the way that proper terms and conditions can be won. That is why I salute those workers and Mandate for taking the initiative of organising. That is seen in the response of the company, which has spent €10,000 on setting up a bogus, so-called colleagues representative committee in flagrant contravention of ILO conventions.

Another heinous transgression by Lloyds since the dispute began has been the targeting and intimidation of pharmacists with the claim that they do not have the right to strike, which every worker obviously has the right to because of the company's community pharmacy contract with the HSE. We will get it in black and white from the Department of Health before the week is out to reassure totally the pharmacists at Lloyds, who want to stand with their colleagues on the pickets. I want to state that pharmacists who participate in the ballot and-or subsequently join Mandate have the constitutional right to strike and the threats of disciplinary action by the company are without foundation. I hope the Minister will echo that point to provide clarity for those workers.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. The Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017 does not make rules for any one company that the Deputy is here to make representations about today. It is to make sure we have a fair and balanced approach for workers and their employers in every single company in the country. The benefit that casual employees will see when we pass the Bill is that, if they are on an if-and-when contract and they have worked an average number of hours over a 12-month reference period, they will be entitled to be placed on a band of hours that reflects the reality of their working hours. Therefore, it will not be as the Deputy has described in his reflections. Employers will also be obliged, by the fifth day of employment after starting, to give employees a list of detailed information with regard to who they work for, what their contract is and whether it is fixed-term, as well as the expected hours of work - all of this before day five. Employees on if-and-when contracts will also benefit from the new minimum compensation provisions so when they are given notice of work but they do not receive those hours of work, they will have to be paid, and we agreed during Committee Stage this payment will be for three hours. Finally, employees on these contracts will also benefit from the reinforced anti-penalisation provisions so, if an employer penalises them or even threatens to penalise them, or gets one of their friends down the road to penalise them when they are on their way to work, they will be entitled to exercise their rights under the Act, bring a case to the Workplace Relations Commission and have that case adjudicated on and the employer reprimanded in the most effective way possible, which is through its pocket.