Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I take Senator Higgins's point and support my colleague, Senator Currie, who has done an awful lot of work on this. Employers have a right to offer contracts with terms and conditions that exceed statutory minimums. They cannot contract people out of statutory provisions but they can always give more than is statutorily required. I disagree on one hand in that I believe employers can put in whatever working arrangements they wish. I see the "shall" in the Bill as being restrictive with regard to whether there is recourse to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, which would only be the case where these arrangements were decided upon in a discriminatory manner. There would only be recourse to the WRC from day one with regard to employment equality. The "shall" in the Bill would have the effect of denying the WRC jurisdiction but would not prohibit an employer from providing such an arrangement. In that light, I am half way with Senator Higgins.