Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

Amendment No. 13 makes two important changes to section 3. First, it moves the exclusion from the scope of the Bill of the property services provided by local authorities in the performance of their statutory functions to section 3 which already contains other exclusions. That is the purpose of amendment No. 7. Second, it inserts a new provision in section 3 to clarify that an employee whose principal function is to provide secretarial, reception, information technology, human resource or financial services on behalf of the licensee and does not directly engage with a client in the provision of property services, except in the context of the performance of his or her principal function, will not require a licence. The amendment is being introduced to address concerns raised by the property services industry that the current definition could lead to uncertainty with regard to whether support staff would need licences.

Amendment No. 14 gives the authority the power to issue guidelines relating to the type of work that will not require a licence.