Ms Teresa Hannick:

I would have to defer to my colleague, Mr. Dooley. As part of the TUG, as are all the unions here, the representative bodies in RTÉ, we have had the same call regarding the fear of bogus self-employment in RTÉ as Mr. Dooley outlined. My understanding is that there has been concern about this for more than 20 years. The Deputy is quite right that bogus self-employment is a terrible scourge in our society. It can be difficult to find it out. As previously stated here, sometimes we do not know people's situations. This has been a campaign. According to my colleagues in the TUG, the group has been banging the drum on this issue and pushing on it for many years. The concern is about the employment and our legislation. There is a proposal for an EU directive on bogus self-employment to come in. I sat here before another committee discussing platform workers and gig work and how difficult it is to prove it. Hundreds and thousands of people are under this. My colleagues from Unite and Connect will tell the committee about the difficulties there but this process has been pushed by ICTU as well.