Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thought it was a very interesting discussion. All I can do is reaffirm that Revenue is paying particular attention to any instances of bogus self-employment it comes across and that it regards the construction industry as being one of the high-risk areas. Revenue has taken action and as I have already pointed out, one piece of work yielded €51 million in additional taxes.

Deputy Burke has given a professional accountant's point of view of how the system has been tightened up with the new electronic system since its introduction in 2016. This is very effective. Whenever a sector is coming out of a recession, it takes a while before it fully legitimises itself. If construction workers are unemployed and then get intermittent work, the tendency is to continue signing on and take the week's work and sign on the following week. It is not until people have a sense of security about having a continuing job that they make the arrangements that bring them fully back in. We have already discussed a scheme for self-employed people whereby the first €40,000 in income for a two-year period would be exempt of tax and Deputy Doherty made the interesting proposal that we split the €80,000 involved into four units of €20,000 rather than two of €40,000. We have built an incentive into the tax code for someone coming off the live register to be self-employed rather than be an employee. In reply to Deputy Doherty's amendment I said the cost of that scheme had exceeded the forecast and that the take-up was stronger than anticipated. I believe some of that is reflected in people being incentivised to style themselves as self-employed and providing services to the construction industry. Many do so legitimately.

There are certain categories of work where services in particular are being provided to different users where people need to be self-employed. It is increasingly true of the information technology, IT, industry. If one brings someone in to reconfigure the software in an office, that person might work for three or six months and move on to the next job. People in the IT industry are increasingly self-employed. This applies across all professions with engineering or architectural consultants, quantity surveyors and so on, connected to the building industry. There is an increasing incidence of self-employment too in areas associated with new technology.

I do not disagree with most of the points made and Revenue has to be vigilant and I am sure it will be aware of the discussion here today because there are Revenue officials present and listening to the committee's contributions. We can take it forward by replying to the former Tánaiste's question about the consultation undertaken jointly by her and me starting in January of this year, and Deputy Doherty raised this as well. The consultation was on the use of intermediary type employment structures and self-employment arrangements and their impact on tax and pay related social insurance, PRSI. That was the mission statement when it was set up. We received 23 submissions, one of which was from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, which were all relevant to the issue. They were passed on to a working group comprising officials of the Departments of Social Protection and Finance. They were also passed on to the Revenue Commissioners. I understand the working group has examined the submissions and is finalising its report which we expect will be published shortly. If I may be bold enough to make a suggestion to the committee, when the report is published, it could use the data compiled in that after the consultation process as the basis for advancing the project because we all agree there are problems and potential problems. That will give us the up-to-date position and the committee could take it forward under the Chairman's guidance.