Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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919. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the way her Department estimated the annual running costs of the proposed au pair council to be €500,000, as she mentioned in her contribution on Second Stage of the Au Pair Placement Bill 2016; the source of the figure she mentioned that less than 1% of child care is undertaken by au pairs; and the total number of households using au pairs to which this equates. [22828/16]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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920. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to substantiate the claim made in her contribution on Second Stage of the Au Pair Placement Bill 2016 that 98% of au pairs are women aged in their 30s and half of these are from South America; and the research undertaken by Pobal and the Department of Justice and Equality to which she refers. [22829/16]

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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921. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to which Workplace Relations Commission ruling she was referring when she stated in her contribution on Second Stage of the Au Pair Placement Bill 2016 that the proposal to exempt au pairs from employment law runs contrary to the ruling of the Workplace Relations Commission. [22830/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 919 to 921, inclusive, together.

The Au Pair Placement Bill 2016 proposed the establishment of an “Au Pair Accreditation Council” to undertake the accreditation and other regulatory functions assigned to it under the Bill. As the Deputy will be aware, the establishment of such an Agency would result in additional costs to the Exchequer. In relation to an estimated annual running cost of €500,000 of such an Au Pair Agency, this figure was based on a comparison with the Low Pay Commission model and information provided by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

The report of the Interdepartmental Group (IDG) on Future Investment in Childcare, 2015, set out a range of evidence based policy options for the delivery of accessible, affordable, high quality childcare. The Report found that au pairs or nannies comprise a small percentage of childcare arrangements. The 'Growing Up in Ireland'longitudinal study (2010 and 2013) indicated that one per-cent of nine-month-olds, and one per-cent of three-year-olds were cared for by Au Pairs/Nannies. Further analysis showed that 0.6 per-cent of 9 year olds had their main care provided by an Au-pair/Nanny. It would be very difficult to estimate the total number of households using Au Pairs from this data.

I referred to a survey conducted by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland in 2015 on trends and working conditions for Au Pairs in Ireland. That survey of 554 Au Pairs found that 48% of those who participated were Brazilian and 98% were women aged between 31 and 35 years.

Other research conducted by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland on ‘Childcare in the Domestic Work Sector'(May 2015) to which I referred was co-financed by the European Commission under the European Integration Fund and was supported by the Office for the promotion of Migrant Integration in the Department of Justice and Equality and Pobal.

The ruling of the Workplace Relations Commission to which I referred in my Second Stage speech related to a case of a Spanish woman working as an Au Pair who won a landmark case against an Irish host family to be treated as an employee in March of this year. The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, took a case to the Workplace Relations Commission on a number of employment grounds.

The Workplace Relations Commission Adjudicator determined the person working as an Au Pair to be an employee and entitled to the National Minimum Wage and to the protections of the Organisation of Working Time Act (which sets out statutory rights for employees in respect of rest, maximum working time and holidays).

The Workplace Relations Commission ordered that the woman be compensated for money owed for work, rest, annual leave and public holidays which amounted to a sum of €9,229. The ruling of the Workplace Relations Commission is consistent with rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to Au Pairs having the status of employees.