Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Again, it is something for the committee to bear in mind. Perhaps Mr. Arkins or Ms Walker or some of the others would know about this practice in the construction industry. One of the ways in which those of us in the Opposition have been raising bogus self-employment, and quite a few of us have been doing so, is to ensure that Revenue is checking whether people meet the criteria, particularly in cases where people may be being bullied into declaring themselves self-employed out of fear that they will not get work unless they do so. However, there are objective criteria as to what a contractor is as against what an employee is. There are certain requirements, such as a premises. There are a series of requirements. I will not go through them now - in fact, I do not have the list with me - but one is supposed to meet a set of objective criteria. Where we have indicated in the Dáil or got word about particular building sites on which people are being misclassified as self-employed, raids on those sites by the Scope section or Revenue have quite easily ascertained whether or not people were legitimately self-employed or whether they should in fact have been categorised as PAYE employees. Does Mr. Arkins believe Revenue and the various other bodies should be checking this and seeing whether people meet the criteria? Would that begin to start to address the matter?