Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important to note that compliance has significantly increased since the start of 2016. Anyone familiar with working the eRCT system for principal contractors will know that for any contract that is undertaken he has to specify the value, the location and whether the contractor has insurance. All these details are available for the Revenue Commissioners to do aspect queries and audits. Essentially, anyone who is abusing this is in clear breach of the law and it is the job of the Revenue Commissioners to enforce the law. We know that there has been a huge increase in the budget for compliance and audits.

There is genuine self-employment and we should not tarnish everything with the one brush. As construction increases, it is only natural that the number of subcontractors will increase because there are genuine subcontractors. The principles in terms of the cornerstone for self-employment are very clearly set out. They are very clear in terms of the principles to which a person must adhere to be termed self-employed. The employer bears a huge responsibility if he is paying subcontractors or contractors who are not genuinely self-employed and he is accountable for that to the Revenue Commissioners.

Obviously RCT is a preliminary tax involving all tax heads; it is a security tax. Contractors who are zero-rated must now have significant history of tax returns with the Revenue Commissioners. I bet there is nobody in here who actually operated an RCT system and who actually sees the significant level of compliance of contractors at the moment.

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