Mr. Rob Kelly:

To respond to Deputy Paul Murphy's question, in our experience bogus self-employment has increased. The reason is that the few decent contractors who are trying to do things properly by paying workers' PAYE and pensions contributions, sick pay and so forth are at a distinct competitive disadvantage because other contractors do not pay social contributions, pensions, holiday pay, sick pay and so forth. If they want to stay in business, decent contractors are being forced to go down that route. It is a competitive nightmare.

On the attitude of employers, this has now become the structure of the industry. As Deputies Bríd Smith and Joan Collins said, 20 years ago decent contractors employed workers directly and took on apprentices every year to give young workers a trade. That is no longer the case. A direct example of that is the national children's hospital. A decent contractor which did substantial work on and built a new extension to the Mater Hospital was lined up for the children's hospital project. It has the experience to do this work but because some other contractor came in and cut the legs from underneath it by using certain practices and engaging in tiers of subcontracting, the taxpayer is reaping the results of a project that has escalated into lottery figures. That is the way the industry is going right now. We need to close the loopholes that allow companies to engage in some of the practices to which we have referred.

If we close one legal loophole, employers will find other loopholes so we must close all of them.

It was extraordinary to hear some of the evidence of Captain Cullen. Our members, individual workers, are facing the same situation. A crane operator who sits in a tower crane for 12 hours a day was told by his employer that it would be good for him if the employer set up a company and made the crane operator a director of it. We raised these issues with employers. We had a worker who sat down with the Construction Industry Federation to try to negotiate better terms and conditions and health and safety. Within 24 hours, the worker was blacklisted and ended up out of work for a substantial period. I managed to find a contractor who was willing to employ him. He started with the contractor on Monday and that contractor received five phone calls last week from people telling him not to employ this individual. Two of them are major contractors. JJ Rhatigan and Company was one of the companies that tried to influence other contractors not to employ workers who are willing to stand up and try to effect change in an industry.