Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I wish Mr. McMahon a good morning. Actually, it is the afternoon. I am an hour behind.

One must ask what happens when things go wrong and people do not have their rights. We saw much of that after the economic crash, particularly in the construction sector where people had spent their whole lives working, many of them self-employed. It is only when one sees people reaching their 50s or approaching pension age and finding themselves out of work without an entitlement to a contributory pension that one realises how precarious this situation is for what is a large number of people. Astonishingly, we have seen a growth in the number of people who are categorised as self-employed even though it is known that their work is precarious. Do people believe that they really have a choice? Are the courts a choice? What should be done? There will always be some degree of self-employment, but the extent of it now is out of kilter. Solutions already exist in legislation. Can they be implemented immediately and how would Mr. McMahon go about doing so?