Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

As I said, in what I thought was quite an informative reply, audits of the construction sector in 2004 yielded €57 million, or 10% of the total audit yield. Nearly 20% of the audit programme was devoted to the sector. The yield for 2005 up to October was €73 million. An in-depth investigation on projects in the east and south-east region showed three persons out of 500 were misclassified as subcontractors.

Data from the Central Statistics Office indicate that in the year to the third quarter of 2005 employment in the construction sector increased from an estimated 221,700 to 252,100, while the numbers of self-employed are estimated to have increased from 56,200 to 57,300. In other words, the increase in overall employment in the sector seems to have been in the employee rather than self-employment category.

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