Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I was at a committee meeting with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection recently and it said it does not keep any statistics for the number of cases of bogus self-employment it deals with because it deals with one end of the problem and Revenue is dealing with another end of the problem. Revenue obviously does not have very definite figures or estimates on what is lost. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, had a report which suggested it was €80 million in construction per annum and €640 million since 2007. There are other estimates which are substantially higher. In their opening remarks the witnesses said that Revenue relies on the report from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, but as was said, the report does not really say what things actually are. To what extent is Revenue looking at and investigating this problem? I saw a report in the newspaper which suggested that at the end of 2016, Revenue carried out about 18,000 inspections and got €54 million between back taxes and fines etc. which came from some form of bogus self-employment. Can Revenue put any sort of figure on this whatsoever?