Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 November 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Chapter 11 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 12 - JobPath Employment Activation Service
Chapter 13 - Actuarial Review of Social Insurance Fund
Chapter 14 - Overpayments of Age-Related Jobseeker's Allowance
Chapter 20 - PRSI Contributions by the Self-Employed
2017 Social Insurance Fund

9:00 am

Mr. John McKeon:

I absolutely agree with nearly everything Deputy Cullinane said. It is difficult and it is something that we find frustrating in the Department. It is difficult for someone who is being paid to stand up and say: "The person who is paying me is not paying me the way I would like to be paid" or "The person is paying me on a contract for services instead of a contract of service." We appreciate that is difficult.

That is why we did the media campaign. We encouraged people to contact the Department, on an anonymous and secure basis. We spent more on that media campaign than we did, for example, on the famous "welfare cheats" campaign last year. We spend more on the campaign asking people to please tell us about whether they thought they were in a situation of being falsely self-employed, and received 50 calls.

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