John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry to interrupt but I must make an important point. Frequently witnesses say that the percentage is dropping, which is correct. I am not talking about bogus self-employment but self-employment. While the percentage is dropping, the number of people is not dropping. The number of people in the workforce who are self-employed is not dropping. I want to make that distinction in case we give the impression that it is diminishing to such an extent that it is not relevant. There are more than 300,000 people classified as self-employed. That is the size of the cohort and while I accept what Ms McElwee has said in terms of the percentage diminishing, the number of people involved is sizeable.