Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I support Senator Mary Ann O'Brien on this issue, about which I, too, have strong concerns. I hope I will not repeat anything the Senator said.

During the Celtic tiger years high rates were paid to employees. We should be providing in this legislation that an agency worker be paid what a new employee would be paid. Instead, there is a doubt in terms of employers having to consider whether they should pay the rate of pay applicable to employees of the company hired during the Celtic tiger years or that paid to new employees which may be lower. The Minister of State used the analogy of a teacher and the new conditions applicable in the education sector.

Amendment No. 7 attempts to address the issue by providing that where an agency worker is making a claim, he or she would be paid at the rate paid to a new employee. I sympathise with Senator Mary Ann O'Brien in this regard. As stated by her, an agency worker will under the legislation have the right to be paid the same rate as a person employed by a company for the past ten years at a higher rate, based on increments and other payments since taking up employment in, say, 2002, rather than at the new rate for the job in question which has been set at a lower rate. Businesses in Ireland will not be able to compete if they are tied to the rates they paid five years ago.

Senator Mary Ann O'Brien has stated that if her company were to take on 100 employees for a few months to fulfil a contract received from abroad, it would have to pay them the same rate as that paid to employees taken on five or six years ago. This is a flaw in the legislation and the matter needs to be addressed today. If not, the Minister of State should undertake to reconsider it before Report Stage. I hope he will accept the argument being made. This will affect our ability to attract foreign direct investment and tie our hands in competing within Europe and with the rest of the world. We should not be imposing on entrepreneurs, the creators of wealth and employers conditions not imposed on businesses in other parts of the world. Acceptance of the amendments would allow us to pay current rates rather than the ones paid five or six years ago.