Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody who contributed to this amendment. I listened carefully to what has been said. I put forward the amendment because there is a cancer called bogus self-employment. It was originally confined to one or two sectors of the economy, namely, construction etc. It has spread, however, and is spreading. If, as the Minister indicated, the Government is doing this, that and the other about it, whatever it is doing is not working because the problem is growing. People are coming to me regularly who have been forced to designate themselves as self-employed, even when it was blatantly obvious that they were employees. People working on construction sites in Limerick, and still working as we speak - some of them doing work for the Government - have been forced by subcontractors to designate themselves as self-employed. I know people in the retail sector who also have been forced to designate themselves as self-employed, as well as in several other sectors. I will come back to one or two of those in a moment.

It is a growing problem, and there has been no legislative response from the Government on it to date. There has been no hint of a legislative response. Being forced to designate oneself as self-employed when in fact one is just a worker, an ordinary employee, has very serious consequences. Under the influence of the EU, successive governments have introduced a raft of legislation to protect employees, including legislation dealing with unfair dismissal and notice requirements. It is wrong that any employer, no matter who he or she may be, can get rid of those protections at the stroke of a pen, or force the employee to give up his or her right to those protections, which have been hard won over a long time. The question of the considerable loss of revenue also arises. I will not go into it. We know the implications this practice has for PRSI. The Government is losing a very considerable amount of money as a result of this.

The Minister said in response that this amendment had not received proper scrutiny, and Deputy Brady agreed with her. I made an attempt to deal with this on Committee Stage. Everybody, including Deputy Brady, to the best of my recollection, said that what I was proposing was not strong enough, that I was trying to deal with the issue by way of a code of practice and that what was needed was legislation and definitions. I have now produced legislation and definitions. It certainly has come very late in the night, but it will, as Deputy Penrose has rightly said, be scrutinised. The Seanad will have plenty of opportunity to scrutinise this. It will have the opportunity on Second Stage, Committee Stage and Report Stage. The Minister and her officials will have the whole summer now to scrutinise it. If any amendments are required, or any amendments from the Seanad are accepted, they will come back to this House for further scrutiny.

Deputy Penrose says that this probably requires separate legislation, and the Minister has said something similar. That is no reason to vote against this amendment. This amendment could be passed, and separate legislation could be produced by the Department which would strengthen or deal with any defects the Minister sees in this legislation. She can strengthen the provisions or change the definitions. I am not proud. I do not mind if this is seen as merely a holding operation. Incidentally, I genuinely did not read the Bill tabled by Deputy Barry. It must have been an oversight on my part. There is a phrase that great minds think alike. We must have independently reached the same conclusion. That this might warrant a second piece of legislation, that this might not be the appropriate place for this provision, or that the Bill could be strengthened or improved is a classic argument against accepting any proposal from the Opposition that the Government does not want to accept.

Since the amendments were published I have come under considerable pressure to withdraw this amendment. I have been accused of all sorts of things, including criminalising the flexibility that exists between employers and employees. That is not true. Employees and employers can make whatever arrangements they wish, and I do not want to interfere with those in any way, shape or form. I am seeking to correct a situation in which a person is told that, because it suits the employer for several reasons, his or her job depends on changing his or her status. That person is asked to sign a piece of paper stating that he or she is self-employed and told to contact the tax office or his or her accountant. The Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection have proven totally passive in this situation.

I have received a number of emails on this matter in recent weeks, and I want to read one.

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