Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will still press this. Primarily because of the actions of workers themselves protesting, backed up by some of the trade union movement, there have been some moves in this direction. What the Minister seems to have said, if I heard him correctly, is that when audits are done and when there is a bit of an increased focus on this we end up getting more money in, and the Minister mentioned the figure of €51 million as a result of a bit of serious focus being put on this. This suggests if we really close down this abuse there would be a hell of a lot more revenue coming in.

It is quite extraordinary that between 2008 and 2014, €2.3 billion was collected under RCT but €2.4 billion was paid back in refunds and offsets. Over a six or seven year period we had a minus figure for this tax head in which 70,000 or 80,000 people are employed. There is something seriously amiss.

To respond to Deputy Burton, I did not for one moment suggest there is not legitimate self-employment in the sector. What I did suggest is that it is not credible in the construction sector where 135,000 people are employed that 70,000 or 75,000 of them are self-employed. This is not credible. This suggests wholesale abuse of the classification of self-employment. We have lots of evidence this abuse is happening. We need to take this much more seriously and we need to move to close it down. Any contractor found guilty of this should be banned from ever getting State contracts.

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