Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 5, to delete lines 30 to 32 and substitute the following:

“(5) An employee’s entitlement to a statutory sick leave day shall commence from their first day of employment.”.

I wish to acknowledge that when my colleagues in the Dáil expressed concerns in relation to workers who adhere to a fixed pattern of work that includes a break of a few months every year and have to complete 13 weeks' service every year to qualify for sick pay, the concerns were acknowledged and amendments were accepted. We welcome that. However, I have included this amendment to discuss the length of time currently provided for in the Bill before a worker can qualify for sick pay, that is, 13 weeks' continuous service.

The Minister of State knows as well as I do that illness and sickness do not pay any heed to how long an employee has been with an employer. I wish to raise the following point. At a meeting of the Oireachtas Select Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Minister of State's colleague, Deputy Bruton, stated:

Sickness can strike anyone at any time, as we have seen during Covid. It does not seem to me to have a foundation to say the right should be deferred for a period. Probation is not about sickness; it is about reliability and other things. If someone is sick and has produced a medical certificate to show that, I do not see how not offering it from the first day is justifiable.

It is not often that I say this, but Deputy Bruton is right. He is spot on in relation to the point.

It is grossly unfair that a person who is sick does not qualify for sick pay because he or she is in the first 13 weeks of employment. I am not suggesting that this was the intention when the Bill was drafted, but we have pointed out that it is unfair, and the Minister of State's own colleague, Deputy Bruton, has pointed out why it is unfair.

It seems to me that the workers' perspective has been missed in this particular aspect of the Bill. It makes perfect sense to me that workers should qualify for sick pay from the first day of their employment. As has been pointed out already, probation is an entirely different matter. Sickness does not pay heed to the fact that an employee is in the first 13 weeks of service, and only strikes after that. People can be unlucky.

The whole point of sick pay is to give people a backup, to ensure that they can be supported by their employers. That is why this legislation is being brought in. It makes sense to ensure that workers qualify for sick pay from the first day of their employment. The current provision is unfair. The good news is that the Minister of State has an opportunity to take this amendment on board. It would fix that, and ensure that from day 1 employees will qualify for sick pay. I hope the Minister of State takes the amendment on board.