Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Section 42 creates a common procedure for the presentation of complaints and referral of disputes under employment legislation to the director general of the workplace relations commission. The individual employment enactments under which a person may present a complaint or refer a dispute are listed in Schedule 5. This section provides for a standardised time limit of six month, extendable to 12 months for reasonable cause. All first-instance complaints requiring adjudication will be heard by WRC adjudication officers. Where a case is referred for hearing, it will be assigned by the director general to a WRC adjudication officer. The role of the latter will be to hold a hearing where both parties are given the opportunity to be heard and decide the matter. Parties will be free to represent themselves or choose their own representation. All appeals will lie to the Labour Court, except in the case of complaints under the Equal Status Act, where the appeals will lie to the Circuit Court.

I am not sure why we have chosen specifically to single out in the case of an agency worker the possibility that he or she could avail of trade union representation.I will have to find out why we have made provision to explicitly deal with the trade union representation when it is implicit that they can choose anyone they like. I will come back to the Senator on Report Stage.