Christine:  Yeah. So just conscious of the time, I want to just get onto kind of the last part of this discussion, which is about employees taking on a second job. On the face of it, you would go, "Well, fair enough. It's their life. Off they go, get on with it". But it can cause difficulties, can't it?

Seamus:  Yes. I mean, the main thing would be, again, coming at it from a welfare perspective is that we do have our legislation in Northern Ireland. We have our Working Time Regulations of 2016, and they set out specifically the ability for a maximum working week, and that's set out in Article 4 of the regulations.

You can contract out of that, but the reason why it's there is it does come from a health and safely perspective. If you're driving heavy machinery or you're operating dangerous machinery, you are working 90 hours a week, and you're coming into work to do your job, you're tired and your eyes are just not on the ball as it should be, and you're injured or somebody else is injured as a result of that.

So the legislation is there to protect employees, to make sure that they get sufficient breaks and rest away from work. So that's really what you're looking at when it comes to second jobbing.

And if you're already doing a full-time job of 40 hours a week in your main employer, and you've taken on a second job then, whether it is in hospitality or in logistics or whatever it is . . . There's a lot of this casual work that is available at the minute that employees and workers can dip in and dip out of at will. It can be very difficult for an employer to manage that. So there are conversations that need to take place.

You will see in most contracts of employment issues around the working time aspects, and then what the position is in respect of second jobbing, whether you've got a second job or not.

Usually, in management contracts, where you're sort of at manager level, it will specifically say that you're not permitted to have a second job unless you get the consent of your employer to do so.

And if you have, as an employee, taken on a second job, you could be in breach your contract of employment, and you may get correspondence from your employer to say that they're aware of it and that it needs to cease, or you might get called in and a risk assessment might need to take place in relation to the hours that you're working, what it is that you're doing outside of your main job, and things like that. But it is something that employers need to keep their eye on.

And also whether or not performance dips as a result of a second job. That's another sort of very real aspect of when employees are taking on second roles. There are rules and regulations out there to protect employees in relation to it.

I think the other things to watch out for in relation to that is you'll have fidelity, and you'll have specific clauses within contracts of employment that will say that you devote your working time to this role.

I think, during COVID, a lot of people did take on second roles. Hobbies and interests became business ventures and things like that. And I certainly know a lot of people that are doing their regular job, but have another job on the side. That's going to become, I think, more prevalent as this cost of living crisis gets worse. People are going to be forced to take on another job or role.

And it's just important, I think, that employers are having that discussion with their employees and letting them know that if they are taking on second jobs, whether they need to look at their contract of employment to get consent for it, or whether they need to make the declaration in respect of their working hours, or looking a contracting out of the hours under the Working Time Regulations.

So it's no more than 48 hours over a period of 17 weeks, as set out in the regulations. And again, you could potentially have Health and Safety Executive in Northern Ireland coming in and doing inspections and checking that there isn't any breach of that happening.

One of the other options in the second poll was, "Are you offering more hours?" And it's just something to flag up there also, Christine, that if you are offering more hours, it's not a situation arising whereby the employee is working 60, 70 hours a week and you're in breach of the regulations at that point.