Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

This amendment provides for the introduction of certain anti-avoidance measures. As such, it was not considered on Committee Stage. It proposes the inclusion of a new section and must, for this reason, be recommitted to the House on this Stage.

This amendment is particularly important given the proposed revision of section 7 that deals with conferring on agency workers the entitlement to basic working and employment conditions. Section 7 follows closely the wording of Article 5 of the directive. As a consequence, this requires that measures are adopted at national level to ensure proper protection for agency workers in line with the anti-avoidance provisions of Article 5.5 of the directive. In particular, there is a requirement to prevent the use of successive assignments of agency workers designed to circumvent and override the entitlements conferred on them.

Amendment No. 15 responds to this by proposing the insertion of a new section 8. The intention is to ensure agency workers on assignment with the same hirer in a series of assignments in which they are doing the same or similar kind of work are not reverted to the starting point on each occasion they commence a further assignment with that employer. Rather, the provision in section 8(1) provides that the series of assignments will be treated as a single assignment which means agency workers will properly accumulate service and other entitlements under employment law. Accordingly, the first assignment in a relevant series of assignments is treated as the objective starting point for determining the commencement of the assignment.

Section 8(1)(b) provides a safeguard to ensure the time in between assignments when the agency worker is not working with the hirer is not taken into account for the purposes of determining entitlements. This would be minimum notice and so on. Section 8(2) defines what constitutes a series of relevant assignments which is that the hirer is the same person or a person connected with the hirer, as defined in section 8(3), the agency worker is the same person on the relevant assignment and works in whole or in part at the same place of work, that work is directed and supervised from the same place, and the work done is the same or of similar nature and undertaken under the same or similar conditions, with any differences being of a minor significance.

Additionally, section 8(2) provides where there is a break between assignments which is greater than a three month period, this breaks the sequence of the series of assignments, and further assignments after that point would commence from the start. The three month period in between assignments is borrowed from the existing legislation in the employment rights area, section 2(2) of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.