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

I am interested in the conclusion to the submission which referred to a need to be mindful of the labour market impact of any new measure. It was stated that a characteristic of the Irish labour market was its flexibility and that it had been argued that flexibility was a key factor supporting employment recovery and growth. That remark says a lot about the determination of the Department to capture what is bogus self-employment, understand it and get the scale of it right. There is something extraordinary about setting up a new web page that has 10,500 hits, with people spending on average three minutes on the page, and then getting a result on the scope section of just 50 calls and 30 emails. There is something wrong there. I suggest the problem is that bogus self-employment is not being captured because it creates a fear, oppression and isolation and is being used increasingly to recruit and exploit the labour of foreign workers, whether they come here through agencies or are resident and have become new members of our communities. That is particularly the case.

Some of us are activists in our communities and trade unions. My trade union, UNITE, has been tackling this for years and I have attended pickets on all of these publicly-financed projects, including the national children's hospital and some of the schools building projects which are now the subject of controversy in Lucan and west Dublin. There have been public housing projects where workers on site have been bogusly self-employed. Instead of being on what is alleged to be the minimum wage or the construction industry norm of approximately €13 to €15 per hour, they end up earning approximately €4 or €5 per hour through that very process of having to create and let on that they have a false company. They are then paid a chunk of money without receiving any protection or entitlement to unemployment or sickness benefit. On top of that, they have to buy their own safety equipment and certificates to cover them to work on sites. These sites are antagonistic to trade union organisation. This is rampant. Producing a document which says it cannot prove it suggests the Department is being entirely ineffective in pursuing it.

Has the Department brought a single prosecution for an instance of bogus self-employment? If so, how many has it taken? Can we pursue more? The Department's legislative procedures appear weak and its determination leaves a great deal to be desired. The Department says the best way to proceed is to identify, investigate and enforce through criminal prosecution false declarations of employment as self-employment. We need to know what results it is getting by way of prosecutions. I note that at the end of the submission, it was indicated that the officials were unable to discuss individual cases. We are going to have to discuss the construction industry, even if it is in broad terms, and the level of abuse taking place within it where State money has been provided, including for example money provided to build the national children's hospital, which is the best example I can use.

The following matter has been discussed publicly because of the industrial relations response to it. Does the Department consider that the way Ryanair employs most of its pilots to be a case of bogus self-employment? Ryanair says to an individual that he or she must set up a company and engage an accountant from one of a number of specified firms and that he or she will then be paid through that mechanism. These workers do not get PRSI or pay tax in the countries in which they work and that has led to certain Ryanair pilots being arrested in Germany and the UK by revenue officials because their taxes were being paid here. The workers benefit from the social structures in their countries of residence but they do not contribute to the PRSI system. Does the Department consider that to be bogus self-employment? If it does not, how does it define bogus self-employment? Certainly, I consider it to be bogus self-employment as do the Ryanair pilots. In fact, it has been called social dumping. The costs to the State from the construction industry have already been provided by Congress, but there is a further massive cost to the State from the airline industry and beyond. The Department lists a number of industries, but not the airline industry in which a significant offence is taking place.