Mr. Martin McMahon:

Yes, all the evidence Scope gathers and the evidence-gathering investigation it does. It does quite comprehensive investigations. Scope on its own is a very good office. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it works really well. The problem is that it is left out of the loop, as I outlined in the presentation. It is sidelined because once an employer or an employee appeal a decision to the Social Welfare Appeals Office, that office decides, as it did in the test cases, that it does not need to hear why he or she is appealing the Scope decision. All he or she needs to say is that he or she intends to appeal the decision. The Scope decision, which is a legally binding one, is then thrown out the door, along with all the investigation that has gone on. It ends up being the worker and the company, plus their legal representation, and the Scope Section and the Social Welfare Appeals Office.

The Scope deciding officer may have the same status as the deciding officer who is listening to the case, none of whom has legal experience. I have asked this question. Social welfare appeals officers are not required to have legal experience, and yet they are making decisions on complicated, large money issues, where a company has negated its entire PRSI responsibility, in a hearing that is held in private, and nobody is allowed to know what goes on. The only reason I know what went on is because I have spent years investigating it. I spoke to people who were actually the test cases back in 1993-1994 and I know for a fact that there was no working courier at that meeting in the Social Welfare Appeals Office. How a test case happened at all is a mystery.