Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise as I have to leave to attend another appointment shortly. I thank both organisations for coming in and for their presentations. I want to make some general points. Ms Murphy referred to the narrative that supposedly supports the approach the committee is taking and the various legislation being put forward. There is a narrative, yes, but there is also a counter-narrative, which is that anybody who wants to do anything about bogus self-employment is in some way motivated to do down genuine self-employed people and to interfere with arrangements that already exist for highly specialised people in the IT area who want to offer their services on the basis that they are self-employed. That is not my intention and, insofar as I can speak for my colleagues, I do not think it is their intention either. We are public representatives and we represent the public. We have to respond as public representatives to issues that are coming to us on the ground. There is a lot of talk about hard evidence and soft evidence, and we can argue about figures. However, I am dealing with the blunt reality in my constituency. Even as we speak, I have complaints on hand from within the construction industry about people being forced to act as self-employed when they are patently not self-employed. I want to make that point.

The IBEC submission states: "Ibec acknowledges that it is important that there is a legal framework in place to firstly, allow us to correctly identify false self-employment where it arises and secondly to provide a remedy or a sanction to deter people from engaging in this practice." It goes on to state that "there is already such a framework in place". Where we differ is that I do not agree that the current framework is working. My colleagues from People Before Profit have separate legislation on this and, therefore, they do not agree either. My colleagues from the Labour Party have similar legislation, so they do not agree either. Of course, we are only members of the Opposition. More importantly, the Minister does not agree either because she is now proposing legislation. If she, as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, felt that everything was hunky-dory and that all we need do is enforce the existing regulations, she would not be busily instructing her civil servants to prepare separate legislation. As matters stand, there are three pieces of legislation floating around from Fianna Fáil, People Before Profit and the Labour Party, which put forward legislation that should have been voted through the Seanad last night if all of our Fianna Fáil Senators had turned up, but unfortunately they did not and the legislation was narrowly defeated as a result, which is something we have to deal with ourselves. As I said, the Minister is also preparing legislation. We will all put on our collective thinking caps and put our heads together to ensure that whatever legislation ultimately emerges will not be, as Ms Murphy described it, blunt, oversimplified or draconian.