Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and this important Bill. I know it has been a long time in the making and that consistent and persistent work has been done by my colleagues in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, my own union, SIPTU, Mandate and Unite. I acknowledge the work of the former Minister of State, our colleague, Senator Nash, and the important report from the University of Limerick on zero and low-hour contracts. I am delighted to see a number of aspects of my party's Banded Hours Contract Bill have been incorporated into the legislation. I think this is due recognition of my party colleagues, Deputies Cullinane and Brady, and Conor McCabe.

I thought it might be useful to start by talking about the contracts people have. Here is one from the hotel industry which is very common throughout Limerick. It states that "[g]iven the nature of the hotel business, the Hotel cannot be specific on the number of hours each member of staff will be required to work each week." One from a prominent manufacturing site in Limerick states:

Hours of work are solely dependent on the department and daily volume of orders that need to be completed. This can and does vary on a daily basis. The company operates from Sunday to Saturday.

It goes on to state:

The Company reserves the right to change these working hours should circumstances require it. As much notice as possible of any such change will be given to you.

On occasions, however ... little, if any, notice will be possible and you should be aware of same.

That is a very standard contract from a very prominent manufacturing site in Limerick. One from the nursing home industry stated that "your normal working hours will be up to 48 hours per week, Monday to Sunday". It is that stark.

Due to my background as a trade union official, people often ask me, while they know these contracts exist, how common they are. They are extremely common and are becoming more common. A frightening statistic I saw today is that of the jobs created in the last 15 months, 66% are temporary. That is quite shocking. We have very good rates of employment growth but two out of three of those jobs are temporary. That comes from CSO figures and from Michael Taft, a respected economist. We have a major problem. Some fantastic work was launched last week. Senator Nash was at the launch with me. It was called Precarious Work, Precarious Lives, by Sinéad Pembroke from the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC. It details that in Ireland, 20% of workers are part-time, many of them in involuntary part-time work. A further 8% are on temporary contracts and 2.5% are temporary agency staff. This type of contract has been inflicted on a big portion of the workforce.

I welcome the Minister's speech. As she points out, people have no security. They cannot plan for the future and cannot get a bank loan. They could not even dream about a mortgage. It is important this Bill is enacted. While we have some concerns about it, I assure the Minister of Sinn Féin's support for it and we will do all in our power to ensure that the Bill is swiftly completed. That includes trying to complete it this evening. I might shorten my speech to allow others in because I think we are due to finish at 7 p.m.