Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is a bugbear. Some time ago, the Minister brought us back a report, which she had independently commissioned, that stated this is not as big a problem as we had outlined. I do not want to be at odds with reports because I am sure they are done in good faith but sometimes we receive reports that may not directly address the issue we feel is important. This has been a bugbear for a long time. It represents huge losses to the individuals who are in artificially contrived bogus self-employment. It is bogus and it is contrived in order to deprive people who are, in effect, employees of what would be a significant corpus of employment law. This is the idea. It is all right to be self-employed. People pay everything themselves and the differentiation between an employee and a self-employed person is well laid down in law and has been determined over a long period of time by the courts, in particular the High Court. This brings us into schedules D and E.

In this case, it effectively means people lose the right to time and a half or time and a quarter, the right to a proper basic wage, the right to holiday pay and superannuation and the most important right of all, which is the PRSI contribution. We meet people in our clinics who were on the lump, particularly in England. We have dealt with many people who came back after working all their lives in England. Because they were on the lump they might as well have not existed. It is no use looking for the snow that fell last winter and telling people they must have something on what they earned in 1972. It does not work like that. The important thing is that people have a contribution.

The PRSI contribution in the most valuable thing. I have always exhorted people to pay it even when they were under the limit. People had to have £2,500 back in the 1980s. The Minister will remember this because she was self-employed. I was an agricultural consultant and before farmers came into the net in 1986 I used to beg them to make voluntary contributions. Some of them were very slow, I might as well be honest. They were still slow in 1986 but then it became compulsory. Now they are very thankful because it is a great saving for people who may have very low incomes to have a pension now. This is how critical it is.

Any artificial contriving of the nature of employment to classify it differently to what it is certainly means a significant deprivation of people's entitlements. Unfortunately, some people may be left in a position whereby they must accept the employment because it is put in such a way that if they do not take it they will not be given the job. We had a big rush on this back during the boom times and we are heading a bit that we again. Deputy O'Dea is attempting to pre-empt this. This horse has already had a good spin around one track and it will not start to run around loose a second time. We want to lock this horse back in the stable. Perhaps the Deputy will agree to six months more, in fairness. The Minister is looking at it and it is very important.

At the other end, the Minister wants PRSI contributions and she would get more this way, and the tax contributions would be far better. We are losing at every end. Significant losses are accumulating and I have no doubt the Minister wants to curtail them. Over the years, thousands of people have been very grateful to the 300,000 genuinely self-employed people for the jobs they have created. There are villages where many spheres of activity would have been wiped out only for them and we are very grateful to them. It irritates ICTU and its various constituent unions that people are artificially worked into bogus self-employment, as Deputy O'Dea has described. They have been making significant noise about this for a long time. Generally unions move on and they go to the next issue but they keep coming back to this.

The State gives out big contracts and perhaps we will find people are being compelled into a self-employment situation not of their own making but because of the construct they face and because they are told to take it or leave it. In any major contract there will be subcontractors but it is very important that we keep an eye on this to make sure it is done in a proper fashion.

This is a reasonable amendment. I agree that we cannot have legislation by reports and I appreciate this. People will take a reasonable view. Deputy Brady's earlier amendment was legitimate, as is this.

We have a good social protection committee. I am not a member of it but I have been accepted to the meetings when I sought to attend by the committee's excellent Chairman, Deputy Curran. I would certainly attend for either of those matters and make a contribution from the knowledge I have garnered over the years.

Although we do not wish to load the Minister with too many reports, I hope she will see a way to do this. I appeal to my colleagues not to load the legislation with too many more reports. If we get a couple of them, we would be quite happy.

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