Mr. Tom Parlon:

I have to refute that absolutely. It is a very serious attack on the reputation of the industry. The Deputy is talking about health and safety. I do not know whether it reached his notice that this is national construction safety week and that a massive investment has been made in the industry together with workers in the safety partnership, the unions and so on to make sites safer. Big investment has been all over the media. There was a stand-down on every site at noon last Monday. Every worker in the country stood still for a moment to think about the safety implications. There was massive investment by the industry in health and safety issues. As a result, we have a very good record. We continue to have unfortunate incidents but they are very limited and are generally in small sites with small operators.

I do not know why the crane dispute that the Deputy raised comes into this but the suggestion that that has something to do with training or health and safety is wrong. As the Deputy knows, that was a result of an inter-union dispute between Unite and SIPTU. Crane drivers were used as part of that battle and the industry got tied up in it. It has now gone through proper process in the WRC and is awaiting a recommendation from the Labour Court, which is the proper channel through which it should be handled. We have extremely good relations with the unions. Unite caused an issue because it was trying to win members from other unions but, other than that, we have a very good record with labour groups.

As for the bogus self-employed, I know it was mentioned in the earlier presentation that there are over 200,000 individuals within the industry, self-employed or otherwise. The CIF does not condone bogus self-employment, nor do its members. There are many individuals and the industry has changed very substantially now in that, traditionally and originally, big companies hired all of their own tradesmen. Now they hire professional subcontractors to handle most elements. We certainly do not condone bogus self-employment. If anything, CIRI will weed that out because, as I will let CIRI's board tell, it has been quite a challenge for member firms to get registered. Before one can become a member of the CIF, one has to go through a very serious process. We do not allow in people if we have issues with their integrity or competence. I will let the board respond about the scrutiny that applies to people.