Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for coming to the House and wish him well with this legislation. It is very welcome.It is only right that workers are well looked after. Employees must be kept happy because then they will do more work and the better the return one will get. As previous speakers said, however, there is going to be a knock-on impact from the cost of this scheme. Somebody has to pay for it. It must be paid for. It will either be the case that small businesses will close or there will be a major increase in costs. This is because the money must be found somewhere. This is a cost to employers. I met many of them and they are wondering why they are paying PAYE and PRSI. Why not pay a little bit more and cover the cost of those sick days? I say that because, in some cases, this could have a devastating effect on some small businesses. As Senator Carrigy said, it will have implications for small businesses especially. If some scheme was put in place to help them, that would be beneficial.

It was mentioned that there are only two countries that do not have such a scheme, but how many countries have a state-sponsored scheme? I think some of the schemes are sponsored by states. In how many of the countries is it just the employers that pay for the sick days? Equally, what level of sickness is there in the private sector compared with the public sector? Is there a difference? Do all the employees in the public sector take their full allocation of sick days? I ask this because I have often heard people say they have a couple of sick days left and must take them. We have all heard that, and we will probably hear more of it as things go on. What was the level in this regard before the pandemic? The Tánaiste said the events of the last two years have shown how necessary it is to put this legislation in place. This is true. We saw this in the meat industry in particular. Have we, though, carried out any analysis of the level of sickness at work prior to these events? Was any analysis done on that aspect?

I welcome this legislation and thank the Tánaiste for what he is doing for workers. It is only right that workers are well looked after. I again refer to there being some sort of a scheme in this context for small employers and the self-employed. Otherwise, some of them are going to go out of business and costs are going to go way up.