Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is wholesale misclassification of the employment status of workers. It affects not just the rights and entitlements of workers but, as Mr. McMahon noted, also compliant businesses that go about their business properly. It queers the pitch for decent employers, facilitates bad operators and goes against the interests of the decent economic model we all support.

The one aspect about which I quibble with Mr. McMahon is the notion that legislative change cannot produce results or change the environment of bogus self-employment. As he will be aware, I sponsored a Bill that passed Committee Stage last March. The Minister's article in The Irish Timesthat month was intended to take the momentum out of the legislation I had developed and, conveniently, it was published the same week as the debate on the Bill. An announcement was made that the Minister would do the divil and all but we still await draft proposals from the Department. Fundamentally, what needs to happen is not a tinkering around the edges or a change to a code of practice that has been fatally undermined and is entirely useless-----