Mr. Martin McMahon:

Cui bono? That is an important question. Who benefits from the fact that the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Social Protection, while admitting that bogus self-employment exists, cannot and will not quantify it? It is not the worker, it is not the pension fund into which employer's PRSI should be going but is not, and it is not the Exchequer, given that less tax is paid by the self-employed. Only employers are benefiting from this. If the Department can send social welfare inspectors to look through the knicker drawers of lone parents, it can look through its own data. It has all of the data. It simply does not want to look at them.

If the worker has a choice to go to the courts, why do the scope section and the social welfare appeals office exist at all? They are meant to take the expense away from the worker. If they cannot do that, they should not exist. It is as simple as that.

The only solutions are laid out in legislation. Anything else would require new legislation. Any decision that is considered unsafe by the chief appeals officer can be set out. Any use of a test case or any scope decision that has been overturned by the social welfare appeals office on the basis that a pre-existing test case exists is demonstrably unsafe. It cannot be done. This means that every case dating back to 1993 must be set aside. The old process that existed before the social welfare appeals office was set up saw a decision of the scope section being appealed by the employer to the Circuit Court, which was a lesser bar and less expensive for the worker. We should return to that situation immediately. All existing and future cases on the insurability of employment that would have been appealed to the social welfare appeals office should be appealed to the Circuit Court. Under current legislation, if the appeals office finds a case to be too complicated, it can refer the case to the Circuit Court. Obviously, a case is too complicated for the social welfare appeals office if it does not understand that it cannot use test cases. Therefore, all existing and future cases must automatically be referred to the Circuit Court. That is provided for under law.

There are solutions, but these are the ones that must be implemented immediately if we are to be fair to workers. We cannot have test cases and decisions arising from other test cases.