Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The REAs will not be worth the paper they are written upon if the trend of direct labour within the construction industry being transformed into subcontractor self-employed labour continues. There has been a significant increase in the number of relevant contracts tax, RCT, cases. The CSO figures for the second quarter indicated a 1.14% increase in the number of people working, yet a nearly 4% increase in the number of self-employed persons. Many of the latter are RCT cases. I have with me a notice from a recruitment agency advertising "labour" in the construction industry as having no bank holidays, sick days or redundancy payments to pay. In other words, it is a form of contract that denudes the worker of every labour right that he or she should have. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has an infrastructure that is meant to investigate the false use of these subcontracting certificates, but it is so slow that workers are left on strike on building sites for months on end until the building work is completed and attention moves elsewhere. Those workers never get the justice to which they are entitled. The forthcoming industrial relations Bill will focus on ensuring decent wages for decent workers and that decent employers can be confident that they will not be undercut by unscrupulous employers, but we must also focus on the issue of forced subcontracting.

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