Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I thank the Minister for coming to the House so swiftly to discuss the issue of sick leave. Senator Quinn is here today and as head of the Superquinn chain he was one of my great mentors as he had one of the great cultures of employment here. I am one of the few employers in this Chamber. I am dismayed at this proposal and the haste with which it seems it will be put through. Will the Minister in her response tell me how many employers were directly consulted by her Department before making this public earlier this week in The Irish Times? My fear is that civil servants, the vast majority of whom have never employed anyone, have dreamed this up and are treating it like a simple accounting exercise. At a time when we are meant to protect jobs and try to create employment by attracting companies, we will put another black mark against our attractiveness and the cost of doing business in Ireland. If the Minister carries through with the proposal as it is, jobs will be shed and businesses will be forced to close in the long term.

I will provide a quote from an Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association of Ireland press release from earlier today. It states "If the proposals on sick pay and redundancy rebates are introduced, it will cause untold damage to the smaller companies and will result in company closures and significant job losses." There is an indication that the Minister would be better off giving business owners an opportunity to trade out of the current environment and focusing her attention on the significant level of absenteeism within the public sector and the inefficiencies within her Department.

Of the 230,000 small businesses employing more than 900,000 individuals, less than 30% could currently afford a sick pay scheme. Of that 30%, a significant number could only afford to maintain a partial scheme. It becomes obvious, therefore, that introducing mandatory sick pay on top of other costs being foisted on companies through State-controlled increases in transport, energy and local charges will be the straw that will break the camel's back in many instances, leading to company closures and job losses.

My company in Newbridge has employed 100 people for 19 years. I had to make people redundant in 2008 but I thank God we have survived. Senator Quinn's Superquinn was my first customer in 1995 and he is a mentor. I have been very fortunate and I feel I have fostered a really lovely culture. We are very business-like, fair and friendly, and we look after our employees. Nevertheless, we are only human beings and I fear that if the Minister's proposal comes through, I would have some dormant couch potatoes among my employees. I wonder what will happen after a match on a Sunday. I could be one of those dormant couch potatoes as I am quite lazy and I would love a Monday or Tuesday off and to get paid for it. Senator Healy Eames mentioned it earlier and the Minister might consider that the employee could pay for one or three days of the sick leave. That would restrain an employee from taking a Monday off. I joked earlier that Mondays should not be included. I referred to some of the rather difficult employment laws and small businesses do not have the CIA, the FBI or Arthur Cox working with them. If there is a dormant employee who is not terribly ill, it can be very difficult to get such people back to work. I will not go into such details.

I will pick up on one point as the Minister stated that we are out of line internationally on sick pay. I am not great with Europe but I am very up to date with the UK because I have a company there. The cost base is significantly lower in the UK than here and although the employer does not make the initial sick payment, we are able to offset the cost against the PAYE tax bill later. This has less of an immediate cash flow implication as the payment would be £81.66 sterling for 28 weeks per week compared to €188 per week for two years here.