Mr. Niall Cody:

The PAYE system and the wage subsidy scheme gave us data. I spoke with Deputy Munster about the level of interventions we had with employers, the level of analysis we could do on payroll data and the level of information we had through the wage subsidy scheme. All of this showed that there were certain outliers and practices about which we were concerned. We have discussed the issue of misclassification several times. Some contractors converted subcontractors into employees when the wage subsidy became available because subcontractors did not get the subsidy. Recently, we have seen some evidence of them being converted back into subcontractors. It is not widespread, but it does happen. We are concerned about what we would call straw men appearing in the construction sector again, with the middleman disappearing. We are concerned about some levels of activity, which we have discussed previously, where labourers are operating as subcontractors and are regularly being paid weekly. We are seeing some of this. It is not mainstream,-----