At the conclusion of the Second Stage debate Senator McDowell raised the matter of the exclusion of agency workers from the scope of the Bill. I wish to clarify that this was done in accordance with the terms of the framework agreement on fixed-term work annexed to Directive 1999/70/EC which provided that the agreement applied to fixed-term workers with the exception of those placed by a temporary work agency at the disposition of a user enterprise. This was done because a separate directive for atypical workers, that is, agency workers, was to be agreed by the social partners at European level as had previously happened in the case of the part-time and fixed-term worker directives. These negotiations broke down in May 2001 and the draft directive in this area was subsequently published by the European Commission in March 2002. It has been under discussion in Brussels since. Accordingly, agency workers were excluded from the ambit of the legislation because of the provision in the framework agreement. They are already covered in the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001. It is the responsibility of the Italian Presidency to advance the temporary agency dossier.