Thomas Gould
Ceist:87. Deputy Thomas Gould asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he agrees with a Government proposal to delay the introduction of paid sick leave. [23340/24]
Amharc ar fhreagraThursday, 23 May 2024
Ceisteanna (87)
Freagraí scríofa
The Sick Leave Act 2022 introduced employer-paid, medically-certified, statutory sick leave for the first time in Ireland. From 1 January 2023, the initial statutory entitlement was up to 3 days’ sick leave, which increased to 5 days on 1 January 2024.
The Deputy will be aware that statutory sick leave, and its phased roll-out, was designed in consultation with the Minister for Social Protection and the Social Partners.
A Ministerial decision will be required by the end of this year on the third phase of this plan, including whether to increase the entitlement to 7 days next year. In order to make this decision, and in line with Section 6 of the Sick Leave Act, the Minister must have regard to several key factors, including (and I quote):
“the state of the economy generally, the business environment and national competitiveness; the state of society generally, the public interest and employee well-being; the potential impact of making an order to vary the number of days; data on earnings and labour costs as published by the CSO; the views of employee and employer representative bodies and any other matters considered relevant.”
I am aware that members of the business community have raised concerns around the overall impact of increased labour regulation on the cost of doing business.
Therefore, in order to consider the impact of any potential further increases to sick leave, my Departmental officials are currently exploring with the Economic and Social Research Institute the possibility of capturing more detail on the impact of the changes to statutory sick leave, which could I understand include further analysis of existing Central Statistics Office datasets, as well as potentially gathering new data.
As this work is at an early stage, it would not be appropriate to speculate on potential outcomes at this point.