Ireland became a member of the International Labour Organization, ILO, in 1923. It was the first international organisation the new State joined. We have been an active member ever since and in June 2021 we completed our first ever term as a titulaire , or full member, of the governing body of the ILO. Ireland is committed to being among the first ILO member states to ratify convention No. 190. To date, only ten of the 187 member states have ratified the convention and it is in force in three. A campaign within the…

As I mentioned earlier, ten countries have signed the convention and three have it in force. Different countries adopt different approaches to these things. Some countries sign things and spend ten or 20 years actually bringing them into force. We try to bring everything into force and then ratify, which I think is a better approach in the round. What we are doing at the moment is seeing if there are any gaps in our laws that we need to resolve before we sign. This will probably slip as these things tend to slip bu…

I am not sure if we have to bring in that formal leave as a requirement of the convention. I would have to double-check that. Regardless, I think it is accepted across the House that it is a good idea and it has been done in some other countries. We need to engage with the Deputy on that, as well as with employer bodies, the unions and the office of the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

We certainly had prolonged restrictions in Ireland, perhaps longer than in many other countries, including other countries in Europe. It does depend on how you define restrictions. Some people define it as working from home and other people define it as business closures and so on. It is worth pointing out that Ireland is now one of the most open countries in the world. Most European countries still have restrictions in place. Businesses are closed and there are restrictions on opening hours. People are not able to…

Deputy Tóibín is correct; a €40 billion rescue for the economy is huge. It is probably the second biggest intervention in the history of the State and the biggest after the banking crisis. We all agree it is a much better one in terms of the number of jobs and livelihoods that were protected, but we do now have a national debt approaching a quarter of a trillion euro, which is enormous. We had a relatively low national debt before the banking crisis ten or 12 years ago. We accumulated a lot of debt dealing with the…

Even before the pandemic, there was a churn in businesses and, in any given year, some businesses close and new businesses are established. In fact, businesses that would have closed anyway perhaps survived because of the measures that we took in regard to the wage subsidy scheme and so on. We expect that when the wage subsidy scheme and the other financial supports are withdrawn, and they are being withdrawn over the next couple of months, we will see some of those non-viable businesses fail, and that is inevitabl…

I have the received the report and while I have not had a proper chance to read it from cover to cover yet, I will. I am keen to get the legislation into the House in the next couple of weeks. Introducing statutory sick leave is part of the pandemic dividend, the more inclusive economy and fairer society we want to build. It is one of five new workers' rights being established this year, the other four being a new public holiday; the right to request remote working and the right to flexible working; new rights arou…

I should say that as the House will be aware and as is always the case with any workers rights legislation, this legislation is the minimum floor. It will not prevent employers having superior sick pay schemes to that which is required by law and that will happen in many cases. There will be employers who will not require a sick certificate for the first day or may only require it for the second or third day. However, to actually require an employer in law to give somebody paid sick leave without any evidence would…

It is important to say that the sick pay we are providing for is up to €110 a day, so if a person is off sick for three days, they would get up to €330. If we compare that to north of the Border, for example, it is £90 a week, so it is a much more generous sick pay scheme than-----

Even accounting for that, it is a much more generous sick pay scheme than exists north of the Border.

The truth hurts, does it not?

As a serious policy point, I get the dilemma and I hear what the Deputy is saying. I really think the solution is not in paying sick pay to people who do not have to produce any evidence that they are sick. The solution is in improving access to GP care and healthcare, and raising the eligibility limits. It is not 40% of workers but 40% of people who receive free GP care in Ireland. We can improve that and we can raise the eligibility limits or, alternatively, we can use the treatment benefits system to perhaps rec…

On 25 January the Government approved the priority drafting of the right to request remote working Bill 2022 and pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment commenced this week. This is one of many measures the Government has introduced to incentivise and facilitate remote working. Others include the right to disconnect and investment in remote working hubs throughout the country as part of our remote working strategy, which was published last…

On a point of information, there is a separate EU directive on the right to flexible working and that pertains to carers and parents. That has to be transposed into Irish law in August and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is bringing forward that legislation. I read some of the articles by Senator Sherlock and Deputy Bacik and there did not seem to be an awareness on their part that there are two separate Bills here - one that derives from and EU directive and the other that de…

Sometimes when a Government sends the heads of a Bill to a committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, it has already decided what it is going to do but that is not the case on this occasion. I have heard what the unions, employers and the public have had to say and I am genuinely willing to change this Bill, strengthen it and make it fit for purpose. I agree that 13 reasons might be too many. It is more than any other country has, so it probably is too many. The self-assessment tool might be too complicated and six mo…

Gender balance at board and senior leadership levels in Irish companies is a policy priority for me and it is an issue I have been engaged in for several years. The policy approach to date has focused on driving culture change in businesses, including by setting voluntary targets for large companies and assisting them to meet them. To help with this, I launched Balance for Better Business in 2018 to promote increased participation by women on the boards and senior leadership teams of companies. Since then, there ha…

I thank the Deputy. She has put her finger on it. In many ways, the approach we have been following up until now is producing good results in the round. State boards are already ahead of the 40% target and publicly-listed companies are at over 30% and heading for 40%. However, that does not deal with the hold-outs that still have all-male boards or maybe just one or two women on their boards. I have no doubt we will get better decisions made in organisations that have proper balance and diversity on their boards. T…

The Deputy makes a very strong case in that regard. As I am sure she will agree, it is not just about the boards but also the senior leadership teams and senior executive teams. At the moment, of companies listed on the ISEQ exchange, 34 do not have any women on their leadership teams. They may have women on the board but not in full-time roles. We have to examine that and act on that area as well. We are now down to five all-male boards. That is down from eight in 2020. I certainly encourage those companies to ref…

I have spoken previously about how the pandemic has caused many of us to reconsider and re-evaluate what an essential worker is. We now understand it is a much broader group of workers than people would have originally described, many of whom are on low pay and in the private sector. The Government has been clear that a legacy of the pandemic should be better pay, terms and conditions for everyone, but particularly those currently on low pay. We are committed, therefore, to honouring the programme for Government co…

We will publish the report and the associated research. I cannot give the Deputy a definitive timeline because it is not under my control. The Low Pay Commission is doing this work. It has a new chairman and a number of new members in addition to other ongoing work. My officials tell me we expect to get the report next month, which will be March. It should not take me too long to consider it. It is hoped we will be in a position to bring proposals to Government in April or May and set out a plan to introduce a livi…