Ms Patricia King:

I will respond to Senator Higgins's points in particular. The Office of Government Procurement could answer a number of the Senator's questions around the issue of how all these matters are monitored and controlled within its model of public procurement. It seems to me that it would be valuable to spend some time getting answers on some of those matters. We have tried very hard to get some of those answers. However, the OGP does not feel obliged to directly answer the questions that we have put to it. Perhaps the Senator would have more success in that regard.

In thanking the committee for this opportunity to address it, I also want to say that there should be legislation to control all of these matters. We recognise that during the course of the discussions on the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017, which has since become law and which we were very active in lobbying for, various parties tabled some very progressive amendments and proposals on bogus self-employment. Our foremost concern was that the legislation was passed and we believed there may have been a view that if issues related to bogus self-employment were included, it would delay the legislation. That was unfortunate. We needed the legislation for other reasons to protect workers around banded hours and everything else and to be fair, Deputies from various parties co-operated with us in the passage of that Bill. That does not negate in any way the value of the content of the proposals and the Private Members' Bills introduced by Senators and Deputies on the matter of bogus self-employment. We would like the committee to try to convince the Government to allow us to arrive at a stage where we have legislation in place that regulates all of this.