Derek McDowell (Labour)

Tá fáilte romhat.

I welcome the Bill in so far as it goes. All of the speakers so far have looked to locate the Bill in the context of overall social legislation, particularly in the European context. It is right that we should do so because this is one part of what is now a fairly substantial corpus of labour law, much of which has been influenced by European directives and agreed at Brussels level before being transformed into domestic law. It underpins what is, in effect, the European social model as it works in Ireland. It is our view, which we should express loudly and clearly, that while we look to encourage enterprise and relatively flexible labour markets, the rights of employees should be guaranteed by law as well as respected by way of collective agreements between the social partners.

As the Minister of State pointed out, the nature of employment has changed over the years and we now have a much greater number of part-time employees than in the past. In that context, he referred to a figure of 294,000. It is correct that we should extend rights under labour legislation to part-time employees, which we have done in recent years.