Ollie Crowe (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators Sherlock and Wall for bringing the Bill before the House. As the Minister of State outlined, the Government will not be opposing it. Having said that, there are a number of matters which need to be examined.

This Bill seeks to ensure that those performing work as interns are paid for their work and if they do more than 30 hours of work within any period of four weeks for another person they would be an employee for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Act 2000. The Bill will need to be examined in detail to determine whether it provides any additional and enforceable rights to interns not already available in existing legislation. All Members across the Houses realise there is an issue and would be supportive of the idea. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the finer detail.

A key point in this regard is that existing legislation provides persons engaged in meaningful work for another person with full protection under employment law, including the rate of national minimum wage, irrespective of whether a written contract of employment exists or whether the engagement is described as an internship or anything else. Arrangements that may be described as internships are not defined, really, by Irish legislation and it should be noted that the designation "intern" by itself has no bearing on the determination of the employment status of an individual. I am sure Senators Sherlock and Wall are well aware of that.

Once it is clear that an individual is undertaking meaningful work, as opposed to merely shadowing another worker or engaging in other training activities, that person has the same protection under employment law as other employees. Apart from the employment of close family relatives and in the case of apprenticeships, there is no exemption in law from the obligation to pay the national minimum hourly rate of pay when work is being performed.Therefore, the national minimum wage rate applies. It is possible that the only effect of the Bill would be to clarify existing law and this matter needs to be further examined and explored as part of detailed scrutiny. I will leave it at that for now and possibly will come back in.