Mr. Martin McMahon:

I believe 100% that it warrants an independent investigation. That should happen immediately. This is a huge amount of money. This affects our pensions. We are now being told we have to work two or three extra years for our pensions but the State has not been collecting employer PRSI. I will say it again. There is no pensions crisis; there is a crisis arising from a failure to collect employer PRSI, yet we are paying for it. Does there need to be an investigation? Yes, absolutely.

Should the Department of Social Protection be involved in insurability of employment decisions at all? I believe the Department has proven that it is not capable of doing this and I believe it should be removed from the role completely. The scope office at the Department is the only office that is acting exactly as it should be. Nothing is perfect but that office is 99% of the way there. The Social Welfare Appeals Office should have nothing to do with it. That office has already proven that it is incapable of dealing with these cases according to case law. The Revenue Commissioners are collection agents. They should do what they are told and not have opinions on whether people are employees or self-employed. It is not their place. The Revenue Commissioners should not be sitting down in the employment status group arguing that historically couriers have been self-employed. That is neither here nor there and it has nothing to do with them.

We should take this away from the Department of Social Protection because it has a conflicting interest. The Department wants to reduce the numbers on the unemployment register and will do it by any means necessary, including by making people work as bogus self-employed workers. The Department has a conflict so we should take the conflict out and give this matter to someone else to address. Before we do that, we must overturn what those responsible have already done wrong. I have no objection to the Workplace Relations Commission taking over this role but it cannot be done in private. That the WRC is doing this in secrecy is allowing an office of the State to make million and billion euro decisions over which no one has any oversight. It is not done in the public domain, but it should be.