Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Neither do I.

Senator Craughwell went to the heart of the issue. I have said time and again there should be clear tests in law that should determine somebody’s employment status and, with respect, it should not just be someone’s opinion. All the circumstances of the arrangement need to be looked at, not merely at what it states in a contract and what somebody is prepared to sign. That is the point.

Too many citizens are denied justice because of the expense of going to the ultimate end and exhausting the processes available. We will return to this later in another section on the role the WRC should have in determining a worker’s employment status and how that should be done expeditiously. We cannot avoid this. If there is any common ground here at all, which I think there is, it should be about getting to the point where we have those key tests in law.

That is direction of travel across the European Union. We know from the proposed transparent and predictable working conditions directive that Europe may very well make the decision for us over the next short period. We will then have to amend our primary legislation to reflect those changes and to accommodate different forms of working.

Platform work is a big challenge for us in this country. I see this Bill and the Competition (Amendment) Act, which we managed to get through the processes in these Houses two years ago, as future-proofing Irish law and dealing with many evolving circumstances in terms of people’s employment rights and those who are engaging in contracts through platforms. That is an evolving situation and I am sure it is an area in which everybody in the House is interested.

As the traditional employment model continues to fray at the edges, it is not too much to ask that people working for a living have a clear sense of their status. My mind boggles as to why we, as a political system and as a Parliament, have not grappled with this in recent years. It is one of the key issues facing us with which we have not grappled. There has been an unwillingness to date to do that. We need to grapple with this now because we have worked together to deal with areas around precarious work through legislative solutions in recent times. This is probably the most insidious forms of precarious work in which people do not have any rights or entitlements. It is outrageous and we need to deal with urgently.