"YOU want to buy clothes and you don't want to be hassling your ma and da all the time", said Kim McDonnell (16) from Tallaght, when asked why she had looked for a job for the school holidays.

Kim was in O'Connell Street, Dublin, wearing a yellow baseball cap and plastic yellow vest, collecting money for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Collectors such as Kim keep 25 per cent of the money they collect, although people may volunteer to keep less.

Kim's first day was last Friday. She began collecting soon after 10 a.m. and worked through to 6.30 p.m. She collected a total of £52, earning £13 for herself.

After a break of two hours she began "a pub run" with an older person, collecting a further £152 by closing time and thereby earning another £38 for herself. Then it was back to the office so the money could be counted.

"They give you a lift home to your door. They're responsible. They're nice enough." Kim was pleased with £51 for her 15 hour day. "I was wrecked but I was happy with the money I got, oh yeah."

Kim is not classified as an employee for the purposes of either current legislation on young people working, or the new Bill soon to be signed into law. Therefore, the fact that she worked more than eight hours in one day, and worked after 11 p.m., is not against the law.

The chief executive of the ISPCC, Mr Cian O Tighnearnaigh, said that while it discourages people under the age of 18 from collecting for it, the ISPCC does engage people as young as 16. "Our policy is that we don't have under 18s out at night and we make every effort to apply it", he said.

By Wednesday Kim said she was fed up collecting money and hoped to get a job as a lounge girl in a pub, like one of her friends.

The new legislation limiting to eight the number of hours 16 year olds can work in one day "is really stupid", Kim said. She had a similar opinion of a night time limit of 11 p.m. "No one's going to hand you a job and say you only have to work eight hours. You have to work to please the employers. What about working in pubs at night?"

Liam Gleeson (16), from Ballyfermot, has a summer job working five days a week, eight hours a day in a Dublin shop for "about £120" per week.

"I spend the money on myself, on my clothes and on my horses," he said. Stables for his two horses cost £20 a week, while feed costs £18. Liam thinks young people should be allowed work any hours they want in school holidays "unless it's hard labour, like on a building site".

In the same shop, Leslie Conway (16), from Dorset Street, was working even though she had a Junior Cert exam the following day. "It's a subject I like so it's OK", she said. Since Christmas Leslie has worked on Saturdays, and sometimes on Thursday afternoons, "to get money for buying clothes and for going places".

The work doesn't interfere with her studies, she says. Most of her friends work.

Like those who collect money for charities, teenagers who babysit for friends or neighbours are not subject to the regulations laid out in the Protection of Young Persons (Employment) Act. Deirdre (14), from the southside of Dublin, babysits for neighbours on Saturday nights for £2 an hour.

Those who will, in principle, be most affected by the new legislation, are under 18s who work nights in pubs. (The old, ignored law also prohibited them from working after 10 p.m.)

Catherine Rodgers (16), from Tallaght, who works nights in her local pub, thinks "it's the parents who should decide what a young person can do, not the Government".

Catherine works three nights a week, from 9.30 pm. until about 1.30 a.m. She only gets paid up to 12.30, "but it's hard to get people out of the pub, and I have to clean up the glasses and the ashtrays after them." A member of staff drives her home. She is paid £2.50 an hour, and spends her money "on clothes, I'm into clothes, and junk, sweets. During the week I bought a pair of Airmacs (running shoes) for £75. My mother nearly died."

Last year she was in transition year and worked during the week. Sometimes it would make me tired the next day and I'd need a nap to catch up." Her mother, she said, does not want her to work week nights next year.

Cathal (16), from the southside of Dublin, works as a petrol pump attendant in a garage close to his home. "I got the job two weeks ago," said Cathal, who has just finished transition year. "I put petrol into cars, check the oil, wipe windows, check tyre pressure, things like that".

He gets paid £1.50 an hour. "I think it's rubbish," he says of his rate of pay. "But you can't get better anywhere else."

"You know this new law?" he asks. "Does it say anything about a minimum wage?"