Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Irish labour market is a scary place for young people. It is a savage place. Young people are essentially being deprived of citizenship. The long-term outlook for the cost of precarious work to society is huge. People have an entitlement to citizenship and if we consider ourselves republicans we, as politicians and political activists, have to deal with it and have to listen to young people. Subsidised payments, the minimum wage, a living wage, punitive levels of welfare, collective bargaining and the access of unions to workplaces were all discussed during a National Youth Council of Ireland meeting in Dublin this morning. As it stands, the State is essentially subsidising employers by allowing precarious work, which favours the company against the worker. The full employment which we are moving towards cannot be like the full employment of the septic tiger. Now is the time to focus on the quality, not the scale, of labour market interventions. Surely we are best positioned now to determine what works best.

We also cannot ignore the links between productivity and job quality. A decent job decent pays well for both the employer and for the worker. The proposed Government legislation to deal with zero-hour contracts has been confirmed by the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection. It would ban zero-hour contracts except in sectors which prefer casual work. This legislation will therefore fail to strike at the heart of the problem. In fact, it will enable the status quoand promote precarious work. I ask for the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, to appear before the House to further discuss her proposed Bill.