Mr. Niall Cody:

I have a piece on the 2019 figures which, I think, would be useful to the Chairman.

In 2019, officers from Revenue's joint investigation units, along with other Revenue staff, conducted 829 Revenue stand-alone construction site visits, interviewing 3,476 contractors, subcontractors and employees on-site to make them aware of their compliance and other statutory obligations. Additionally, we carried out a further 844 construction site visits in conjunction with either the Department of Social Protection or the WRC to include 39 visits with both and we interviewed a further 3,176 individuals. On a combined basis, these 1,673 visits in 2019 reflect an increase of 14% over the previous year. As a result of these activities in 2019, 297 individuals were registered as new employees for PAYE and an additional 97 subcontractors were reclassified as employees.

I know that Oireachtas committees have discussed site visits before but these are unannounced and not the normal audit arrangements. When we do site visits they are unannounced and there have been a lot of colourful tales over the years about people running out the back as quickly as we are running in the front. There is a problem and we are carrying out these site visits because the sector is not completely free of practices of which we would not approve. We pay close attention to this but there is a challenge in the area. I know a lot of people in the construction sector and our officers are in the community and they know what happens. We pay close attention to it and we follow up as best we can. This year is somewhat different because of the environment we are working in where the site visits are constrained because of Covid-19.