Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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403. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will amend the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 to include all those in statutory apprenticeships. [34395/14]

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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Section 5 of the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 provides that the Act does not apply, inter alia, to the remuneration of a person who is an apprentice within the meaning of the Industrial Training Act, 1967 and Labour Services Act, 1987. The decision to exclude statutory apprentices from the scope of the Act was based on the recommendation contained in the Final Report of the Inter-Departmental Group on the Implementation of a National Minimum Wage that apprentices serving statutory apprenticeships should be exempted in recognition of the unique nature of suchapprenticeship and the fact that a long-established practice for determining rates, which adequately protected apprentices, already existed. Prior to the 2013 decision of the Supreme Court in the McGowan case, Registered Employment Agreements for the Construction and Electrical Contracting sectors made provision for rates of remuneration of apprentices that were legally binding and enforceable in those sectors. The effect of the Supreme Court decision was to invalidate the registration of employment agreements previously registered under Part III of the Industrial Relations Act, 1946. All such agreements no longer have any application beyond the subscribing parties and are not enforceable in law.

Having considered the legal advice from the Attorney General on the implications of the Supreme Court ruling, and given the importance of the issue for employers and their employees, particularly in relation to rates of pay and tendering for contracts the Government decided on 23 July to bring forward legislation to address the ruling and to provide for a revised legislative framework that would be fully informed by the Supreme Court judgment and be expected to withstand constitutional challenge in the future. In this context, it is proposed that the new framework governing sectoral rates of remuneration will provide that rates of remuneration to cover apprentices to be provided for in legally binding Ministerial Orders, if appropriate.