Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I raise the Supreme Court ruling of 23 October in the case of the Revenue Commissioners v. Karshan (Midlands) Ltd. t/a Domino's Pizza. This was a landmark judgment in the fight against bogus self-employment in Ireland. Across this country, many workers are forced into bogus self-employment arrangements in order for their employers to save on PRSI payments. It deprives workers of their rightful entitlements as employees and their social welfare entitlements. It cheats the State out of tens of millions of euro in lost income from PRSI payments.

That the Revenue Commissioners had to pursue Domino’s Pizza is significant. This was not the workers putting their heads above the parapet. Many cannot afford to take the chance to vindicate their rights. Instead, this was the Revenue Commissioners seeking to ensure that employers pay what is required of them to the State. There are serious questions for the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and I am calling for a debate with the Minister on this important ruling. The question arises of whether an arm of the State should have to go through expensive litigation to stamp out bogus self-employment. Is it not the case that the Government should now legislate to make it crystal clear what self-employment status is and for that to be clearly set out in our Statute Book? Is it acceptable that we have different arms of the State taking different views about what is self-employment or bogus self-employment? In the case of Domino's Pizza, a social welfare appeal adjudicated that the workers were self-employed, whereas the Revenue Commissioners decided that they were not. Anybody here who is interested in the efficiency of the public service and in not wasting taxpayers' money has to ask how the Government can stand over a situation like this.

That is before we talk about the workers who are at the heart of all this and who were denied proper access to pay, pensions and sickness and holiday entitlements and who ended up with much poorer access to social welfare in the event that they needed it. The Labour Party introduced legislation in this House in 2020 that is designed to stamp out bogus self-employment, to allow for the automatic designation of every worker as employed and to provide for an opt-out system for those are truly self-employed. We will bring that Bill to Second Stage over the coming months.

The final thing I want to say is that we have a farcical situation on our hands with RTÉ whereby it, a semi-State company, is using taxpayers' money to fight the Department of Social Protection in order to avoid providing RTÉ workers with their proper pay and entitlements. That is ludicrous. The director general said it is confined to a few situations. The paperwork I have seen suggests otherwise.RTÉ is contesting the decisions made by the scope section of the Department of Social Protection on much broader grounds. It is ludicrous that we are in this situation.