Submission on the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Bill 2000
Summary
The purpose of this submission is to provide a critique of the substantive provisions in Part II of the Bill. It will suggest where clarification is needed and will recommend where amendments should be put in place.
As a preliminary observation, it is our view that this Bill is unnecessarily obtuse and a number of its objectives could be achieved in a more straightforward manner. It is important to note that this Bill implements a European Directive and there is a general requirement that legislation implementing Community Directives should pass a plain, intelligible language test. It is doubtful whether this Bill could be considered to pass such a test, in particular in relation to its accessibility the employees it is intended to protect. Whilst it is accepted that the Parliamentary Draftsman's Office must attempt to cover many eventualities when framing legislation, the aim should be to simplify as much as possible. On occasion when reading this Bill, it is genuinely difficult to discern what is intended by it.
Observations on the Bill are made in the order of the occurrence of the issue rather than in order of any particular importance.