Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The National Employment Rights Authority only covers employees. We now have these bogus self-employed contracts, so a person is not deemed to be an employee and does not have any rights as an employee under the labour legislation because he or she is deemed to be self-employed. The company I mentioned carries out this sort of thing. With regard to Ms Callan's comments, of course I am not proposing to legislate because of one company. Obviously that would be daft.

However, just as her association has to consider the majority of businesses, we have to consider what is a pattern for the majority of workers.

There is a majority of part-time workers whose part-time hours are connected to the fact that they are low paid. I am not making up the statistics. These are EUROSTAT figures on the prevalence of low pay in this country. Ms Callan may argue that the reason they do not want to work more is because they can do better on welfare, but does that not tell us something about the rate they are paid and the sort of contracts they have rather than the other way around?