Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McMahon for raising this. The definition of self-employment has been an issue on these islands going back to 1860. Undoubtedly, there are contracts for service which should be contracts of service. In some cases that suits a worker who should be a direct employee because they perceive an incentive where they might pay less tax in the short term, but what they are doing is depriving themselves of employment rights and PRSI entitlements over time. I have come across this on many occasions. There has to be a bigger discussion beyond the view of the Department of Social Protection or the Revenue Commissioners. There needs to be education on this too.

I talked about case law. I take Mr. McMahon's points on the way the Department or Revenue operates. Regardless of that, common law also applies. If we look at the definition of a contract of service, and the appalling term, the law of master and servant, all that case law allows a person to raise an issue in the courts. Mr. McMahon is correct, they say it should be done on a case-by-case basis and they use legal tests, the control test, the integration test and so on. We know all the famous cases involving the Sunday Tribune, Readymix and so on. Would it be fair to say that regardless of how agencies operate, it is open for any employee to take a case through the legal process to prove that he or she has a contract of service in the same way as the Uber case in the Supreme Court in the UK, which is likely to be a precedent that we would also recognise here? That is an option, although expensive, perhaps prohibitively so.