Jimmy Harte (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, to the House. I listened to his speech which was detailed and fairly jaw-dropping. It explains everything well.

The last three paragraphs of his speech encompasses the Bill. He stated? "The reform of the statutory wage setting machinery operating at sector level and placing the JLC and REA systems on a more secure legal and constitutional footing represents a significant commitment by the Government to protect the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers." Industrial relations has moved on in the past 20 years with the advent of foreign nationals who have come here to work, generally at the lower end of the employment scale. Those workers must be protected, as must citizens who work Saturdays and Sundays.

Perhaps the debate on Saturday and Sunday working is one we should hold separately. I have been to France on occasion. One year, on a Sunday, I went looking for a litre of milk in a town on the south coast of France and it was not available. All the shops and filling stations were closed. We were looking for milk only with which to feed the baby, but it ended up that we had to go into a bar to ask for a litre of milk. For the French, not because of any religious reason or any other reason, Sunday is the day where they do not work generally.

The catering and hospitality sectors here are the sectors which are under pressure on Saturdays and Sundays. In the retail sector, people shop on Saturdays and maybe even Sundays at times because the shops are open, whereas as far as the hospitality and the catering sectors are concerned, people are on their leisure time and go for a meal and a drink at the weekend. It is necessary that the hospitality and catering sectors are focused on this but it is not in the case of retail. One can only shop so many days in the week but one eats every day of the week. The weekends are important for the tourism sector.

We have a system where Sunday wages will match what workers expect. Any Member of the House who, as part of public life, must spend a Sunday at a function knows it is time out of one's leisure. It is time one's family misses one and one misses one's family. Many are forced into working on Sundays out of economic necessity or because an employer states that if the person does not work a Sunday, he or she will remember that. It is a broader debate for another day. I read a book some years ago called No More Sundays in Belgium, which described how, before the First World War, the Sunday was the Belgian day on which one drank coffee, but that when the war started, Sunday disappeared into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. The European model of a Sunday, where we go back to a more basic day of shopping and leisure, has been raised again in these economic times.

The Bill is important for someone like me who set up their own business. Unlike Senator White, I set it up not to provide employment for others but to provide employment for myself and my family. That is how small businesses function. One does not set up a business to provide employment for others. Perhaps Chuck Feeney could do it because he had $10 billion in the bank. All small businesses are set up to give the person an income. It is fair enough if one gets to a stage where one has so much money one can set up businesses for philanthropic purposes.

I understand the sensitivities of dealing with staff. Asking staff to work days on which they are not generally expected to work is quite difficult and is something every small business must deal with differently. There are different sectors, such as retail, hospitality and financial services. The issue of trading on a Sunday does not arise for a solicitor or an insurance office. Employers in the hospitality sector have a difficulty. In the Minister of State's view, to get the unemployed back to work, to achieve competitiveness in the economy and for the economy to grow again, we must deal with setting wages that will be competitive for the employer but also will look after the vulnerable workers who must work on a Saturday night or Sunday morning.

The Minister of State said the overall effect of these reforms will be to help reduce the cost burden of record-keeping, which I am aware has got out of hand for small businesses. I refer to the cost of compliance, form-filling and keeping records. It is not that proprietors do not want to keep records; it is the duplication of records that is the issue. When I started my insurance business in the early 1980s, everything was photocopied and kept manually. With the advent of technology, we were told we would have less paperwork. Anyone in business will be aware their paperwork has trebled or quadrupled in that time because the compliance offices state one must keep a paper record of every e-mail one sends and every application made. It has ended up that technology has generated more paperwork than existed previously. Record-keeping and compliance is still a problem for small companies. It is an extra cost they sometimes cannot bear.

I welcome and commend the Bill. As someone in small business who talks to those in small businesses all the time, it is welcome legislation that must enhance competitiveness, preserve jobs and create more.