Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt this Bill is ground-breaking in terms of providing all workers in this country, once they have served 13 weeks, with a right to paid sick leave. We in the Labour Party very much welcome that, and the Minister of State earlier acknowledged the Bill we put forward in September 2020 to give a right to all workers with regard to paid sick leave. When we look at this, we have to remember who in this country has an occupational sick pay scheme and who does not.The more a worker earns the greater the probability of him or her having an occupational sick pay scheme and the less one earns the greater the probability that one is reliant on the State's illness benefit system. This Bill is about low-paid workers and middle-income workers, but, in particular, low-paid workers.

I want to speak to amendments Nos. 15, 17 and 18, and to support amendment No. 14 as well because it is an alternative to amendment No. 15.

I have looked at the debate in the Dáil about the Government's rejection of the payment of a worker's full rate and we have to question that. Workers on low pay do not have spare capacity. They cannot afford to not work because of the bills they have to pay. If they are only getting 70% of what they would typically expect to earn, there is an issue about providing them with the assurance and comfort of knowing that they will not be out of pocket when they fall sick. They will be out of pocket under the proposals in this Bill because the maximum payment is 70%. We believe that is wrong. It needs to be at a full-day's pay rate. As I said earlier, no worker wants to be sick. Workers want to get on with their work. They want to be able to pay their bills and know that they can pay their bills as opposed to having to take a cut in income because they are sick.

In section 7, the maximum daily amount has a number of exceptions or allowances. There is an allowance regarding board and lodgings. I do not believe that is fair. They are either to get their daily rate of pay or not, but to introduce an allowance in respect of board and lodgings is wrong.

That brings me to amendment No. 17. I am reluctantly bringing forward this amendment in the knowledge that the Minister of State will reject our amendments to ensure that workers will get their full daily rate. It is to ask that, when he is introducing the maximum rate of pay, the Minister of State will also introduce a minimum rate of pay. I listened to the Minister of State's comments earlier where the talked about the Minister taking a full perspective on this Bill. Beyond labour legislation, the Minister is ignoring what is happening in the health system at present because there is not timely access to GPs in this country for many people. There may be people in this Chamber who can pick up the phone to their GP and get an appointment within a few hours but there are many workers out there, particularly if they are new to this country or if they are new to a particular area, who cannot get a GP appointment within a day or two days. One could be waiting well over a week.

Senator Gavan already touched on affordability. The reality is minimum wage workers will not get enough in sick leave benefit to cover the cost of going to the doctor. Amendment No. 6 was an eminently sensible amendment and it is unfortunate that the Government has ruled it out of order. I suppose what is particularly striking is that the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the legislation, recognised that there is an issue with timely access and affordability of GPs. In an ideal world we would have certification on the first day of illness, if GP visits were free and one was able to get them in a timely fashion, but that is not the reality in this country. There was a strong cross-party recommendation from the committee - I note Senator Ollie Crowe was here today - that an allowance would have to be put in place for low-paid workers and the Government has ignored that recommendation in bringing this Bill before the House. Because the Government has ignored that cross-party recommendation, I am asking the Minister to State to introduce a minimum rate of pay to ensure that any worker will at least be able to afford the cost of going to the doctor from the first day of illness.

To go back to my original point, this Bill has to work for all workers but it particularly has to work for low-paid workers because they are the ones who do not have occupational sick pay within their workplaces. We need to ensure that this Bill works for them.