Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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233. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the details of the provisions in the promised Bill to tackle insecure low-hour contracts and bogus self-employment. [2132/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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On 7 December last year, I published the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017 in response to the commitment in the current Programme for Government to tackle problems caused by the increased casualisation of work and to strengthen the regulation of precarious work.

The proposed legislation aims to improve the security and predictability of working hours for employees on insecure contracts and those working variable hours. The Bill has a particular focus on low-paid, more vulnerable workers. It provides for five key issues:

- Ensuring that employees are better informed about the nature of their employment arrangements and, in particular, their core terms at an early stage of their employment.

- Strengthening the provisions around minimum payments to low-paid, vulnerable workers who may be called in to work for a period but not provided with that work.

- Prohibiting zero hours contracts in most circumstances.

- Ensuring that employees on low hour contracts, who consistently work more hours each week than provided for in their contracts of employment, are entitled to be placed in a band of hours that better reflects the reality of the hours they have worked over an extended period.

- Strengthening the anti-victimisation provisions for employees who try to invoke a right under the Bill.

I look forward to working with all sides of both Houses of the Oireachtas so that this important Bill may be progressed as expeditiously as possible over the coming months.

Separately to this Bill, a working group from my Department, the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners have compiled a report on the use of ‘disguised–employment’ such as intermediary employment structures and certain self-employment arrangements. My Department is concerned that such mechanisms are being used to reduce the amount of PRSI and tax being paid with a subsequent loss to the Exchequer and the Social Insurance Fund. The Minister for Finance and I are considering the report with a view to its publication in the near future.