Mr. Niall Cody:

I have been looking at a lot of this material. If we go back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, there was a move towards owner-driver processes. There was a case in Readymix - I can mention the case because it is a court judgment - in regard to owner-drivers of ready-to-pour concrete vehicles. That process happened all through the 1980s and 1990s, and we have seen it with milk collection but also with milk deliveries. On the whole process of self-employment and employment, the grey areas that overlap in classification and misclassification are a challenge in which we are only one of the parties. From a tax purpose, the tax liability is actually the same whether persons are taxed under "self-employment" or under "employment", except in the treatment of expenses that are allowable. We were dealing with this against a backdrop of non-compliance across a sector. The person in our office dealing with this was working on it for a considerable period in the 1990s. What he was trying to achieve was to ensure the sector was brought fully into the tax system. We were not determining social insurance or employment rights.