Mr. Niall Cody:

I know exactly what the Deputy means. From a tax perspective, when the judgment happened, we issued a public notice to anyone who engaged workers, subcontractors or contractors and said that, under the self-assessment system, the onus was on the employer to operate PAYE if the person working for the employer was providing a contract of service and was an employee. It is not a question of “I will if I want to”. For tax purposes, there is an onus. The court was clear on the point that all that was in front of it was the tax treatment. Employment rights were not in front of the court. I expect that, over time, some of those rights will be. There is other legislation that gives rise to particular employment rights. Someone may need to have served nine months, a year or whatever the case may be.

This case was interesting because it effectively changed the understanding out there. For a one-off job, someone could be an employee if he or she met the five terms. That was probably not seen to be the case beforehand. I know that not all of the interested stakeholders fully agree with our interpretation of the case. This will lead to further challenges and dispute. I pay attention to some of the issues in which the Deputy has been involved. It is interesting to see what the WRC is doing. In adjudication cases, the WRC is using the decision tree to establish whether someone is an employee.