I move that the Committee agree with the Seanad in the following amendment:—
In page 3, line 13, "or if any of those five week-days is a Church holiday and the worker either does not work on that day or completes less than nine hours of work thereon", inserted before "he shall be regarded".
On the Report Stage of this Bill in the Dáil I gave an undertaking or a promise that I would consider the question of church holidays. I put forward this amendment in the Seanad where it was passed. I am now asking the Committee to accept it. What the amendment means is that whether a worker works on a church holiday or not, he will now qualify for his half-day. The original provision was that he had to work 45 hours in the week before qualifying. For instance, if an employer was to regard the hours that the worker was absent attending a church service in the morning, these might be deducted from his working week and so he might not qualify for the half-day. That position is now rectified under this amendment.
