Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 10 February 2022
5. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will consider for provision to be made for limited periods of self-certified sick leave under the proposed sick leave Bill until such time as free and universal general practitioner care is introduced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7199/22]
View answerThe Tánaiste will by now have received the pre-legislative scrutiny report from the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The debate on self-certification or medical certification was pretty robust, as the Tánaiste can imagine. I put down this question because I want to hear the Tánaiste's views and hear if he can understand the quandary the committee found itself in, inasmuch as this is a very important public health measure. Access to sick leave is extremely important but there is a financial barrier that specifically impacts on workers on low incomes.
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 around redundancy for people laid off during the pandemic; and better protection of workplace tips and gratuities.
Ireland is an outlier among developed OECD countries in not providing for any statutory paid sick leave. I do not think it is right that people feel forced to go to work when they are sick and it is certainly not good for public health. The Bill is intended to provide a level of protection for low-paid employees who may have no company sick pay schemes and, therefore, cannot afford to miss work. As a starting point, this scheme will cover the three waiting days before eligibility for illness benefit from the State kicks in. This is a progressive Bill and will ensure all employees are better off and will have financial protection from day one of a medically certified absence.
Taking account of the current economic climate, the initial period covered by employers will be modest but will increase incrementally. We must be mindful of imposing excessive costs on employers, particularly small businesses, many of whom have had a very difficult two years with Covid and Brexit. That is why we are taking an incremental approach to introducing the scheme.
The legislation will provide for sick pay of 70% of gross salary up to a cap of €110 for three working days in a calendar year, and will eventually go to ten days. I believe it would be unreasonable to introduce a legal obligation for employers to pay for sick leave without the need for a worker to produce evidence for this in the form of a medical certificate. That would not be sick leave; it would be a different form of leave. The requirement for a medical certificate for paid sick leave is a fair and necessary provision. It is also not an unusual requirement. Employees are currently required to provide medical certificates to access the State illness benefit scheme and it is a requirement in many sectoral and company level sick pay arrangements.
I thank the committee for its work on the pre-legislative scrutiny report. We will consider it carefully and I will bring the Bill to the Cabinet as soon as possible.
The Tánaiste mentioned people who cannot afford to stay off work. It is important that people who are sick have the comfort of knowing they can stay off work, and we all agree on that. However, there are people who cannot afford to go to the doctor. What I am trying to put into the Tánaiste's head and what I am asking him to consider is the case of a worker who cannot access this. They might have €55 or €60 in their pocket but that could be the money they have to do them for the rest of the week. In a situation where a worker does not have the necessary funds to be able to go to the GP, that worker is left in a quandary, as I am sure the Tánaiste can see. They cannot afford to take the day off work and they cannot afford to go to the doctor where the certification is required.
I fully understand the need to phase it in and we will work with the Tánaiste to get this legislation through. However, we cannot have a situation where workers have access to a statutory sick pay scheme that they cannot access because they do not have access to the funds to go to a GP.
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 not be right or fair and it would change it from being sick leave to being a different form of leave. I just do not think that would be the right thing to do.
The solution to this is through the GMS medical card system. At the moment, about 40% of people in the country either have a medical card or a doctor visit card, so those on the lowest incomes currently do not have to pay to see their doctor. I appreciate there are people on low pay who do not qualify for a medical card or a doctor visit card, and the Deputy and I encounter them all of the time in our work as constituency Deputies. To me, the solution is improving the eligibility limits and making more people eligible for the doctor visit card and the medical card, rather than requiring employers to pay sick pay to somebody who does not produce evidence that they are sick.
Approximately 16% of people who are at work are covered by the medical card, so that would need to be much broader. The committee was grappling with this point. The Tánaiste mentioned that we are an outlier, which we are in terms of not having a statutory sick pay scheme, but we are also an outlier in that the vast majority of people have to pay to go to their GP. In the absence of access to GP care without cost, or without a cost to the individual going there, it is unfair to put that in place. In the countries the Tánaiste is referring to where certification is required on the first day as part of a statutory sick pay scheme, those workers have access to a GP that they do not have to fund out of their own pockets. That is where the problem is. It could be that a short-term solution is required while we await the establishment of a GP service that is free at the point of delivery. We are not there yet and we are not nearly there, so the fact is there will be workers who have to make that decision. The Tánaiste and I both agree that sick pay is an important instrument of public health but it cannot only be for people who can afford to access the GP while we wait for GP services that are free at the point of delivery to be introduced.
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-----
They have access to a GP without having to pay for it, so it is apples and oranges.
Even accounting for that, it is a much more generous sick pay scheme than exists north of the Border.
At the top rate-----
The truth hurts, does it not?
No, it is not that.
Order, please.
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 recoup some of the costs of attending a GP in the way that is done for a dentist, for example, or an optician.
