Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If I were a biscuit maker during the day, could I drive a taxi in the evening? Would I have to tell my employer? What business is it of my employer what I do after 5 p.m.? I appreciate that my employer would not want me to make biscuits for a rival biscuit maker but it would be none of his business if I were active and entrepreneurial enough to earn some money in an industry in which demand has peaked, as the Minister stated, and if I were not doing anyone any harm. I would be serving customers and contributing to customer waiting time reductions worth ¤780 million, as calculated by Goodbody. Is the measure as draconian as it appears, such that everybody who does as I describe must inform his other employer?

I appreciate that the Minister of State received advice from the Office of the Attorney General.

The purpose of the university Senators is to seek the advice of their colleagues and my colleagues in the law school in TCD find this in breach of everything in terms of people's right to privacy and they see it as breaching the European Convention on Human Rights and as a way to assist incumbents at the expense of the part-timers. Could we not have it in contracts of employment that people who drive buses cannot drive rather than a blanket ban on everybody else from driving and requiring them to register that with their current employer? The Department, either advertently or inadvertently, is trying to get rid of the part-timers who perform such a valuable role.