Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The legislation on the victimisation of workers is important. In recent months, I have been approached directly by a number of people who were genuinely afraid that even if they won their cases, they would have no choice but to leave their organisations because they would be treated so badly. That is not acceptable and that culture needs to be stamped out. We will do that in law. Similar provisions that we introduced this year through the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act are working nicely and should be used to reflect this matter also.

The two issues that the Deputy has sought to have resolved do not fall within my remit, but under that of the Minister for Finance. I am sure he would be delighted to hear the Deputy concerning them. What I can do, however, is introduce legislation to address the issue of employers who misclassify deliberately. We must define what "deliberately" means as opposed to "unknowingly", "unwittingly" and all of those good legal terms that can be used to get one off the hook. Where payments are underdeclared, the case will not just be as it is, where those payments must be repaid starting from the date the worker started working with the company. Rather, we will introduce significant fines. I hope they will deter people from such actions.

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