Mr. Rob Kelly:

Unfortunately, our experience as union officials aligns with the experience of our members in the construction industry who have suffered bogus self-employment - there is no point in going to the scope section of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Mr. Fitzgerald referred to the situation at Kishoge community college. It took two years to get a response in that case from the scope section, at which point the main contractor, who was deemed to be the employer of the workers concerned, challenged it in the High Court. The matter is somewhere in abeyance and has not been resolved. We would not recommend for English language teachers to take any case to the scope section because it is not fit for purpose. There are more television licence inspectors in the country than there are officials working in the section, which is something that must be addressed.

Mr. Cullen spoke about cases in the airline industry where shelf companies have been set up and people are being forced into being directors of them. That is something we are seeing spread into the construction sector. For example, we have had many cases recently of crane operators who were coerced into becoming company directors. It is a similar structure to that which is used where accountants are made to be directors. My cynical assessment of the situation is that where there are ways and means of making more money and increasing profits, some companies will use them time and again, to the detriment of workers.

There was a very sad case recently on a building site just down the road from Leinster House, where one of our members had been working on PAYE on a contract for a major project in Cardiff Lane. Only weeks before an accident on that site, which resulted in him losing his left leg from the knee down, he had been coerced into becoming self-employed through another shelf company. Therefore, he lost out on a substantial amount of sick pay from the construction workers pension scheme, which is an entitlement under the sectoral employment order for employees. This is having a massive effect on workers in the industry. It is up to the committee members to influence that change, if they can.