Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. I am familiar with the time Deputy Boyd Barrett described when he referenced events ten or 15 years ago. In a previous role, I assisted migrant workers in the construction industry to engage with the scope section and their employers. In my constituency, airline pilots have also faced that issue.

As agreed by all Deputies this evening, the committee's report deals with a very important issue. Deliberate misclassification of a worker as a self-employed contractor in a scenario where he or she is actually working as an employee is wrong for number of reasons. First, it results in a loss to the Social Insurance Fund, which pays for a wide range of social protection schemes. More important, it can deny workers access to our robust employment rights legislation.

I reiterate that it is not a matter of making a choice about someone's employment status. Employment status should reflect the reality of the relationship between the parties and while it will be difficult to fully eradicate false self-employment, the Government is committed to minimising its potential and detecting and dealing with it whenever it does occur.

Working with the WRC and Revenue, the Department of Social Protection will ensure we tackle the issue of false self-employment with a joined-up approach. While self-employed individuals now have an entitlement to a large proportion of available social welfare entitlements such as the State contributory pension, there are some benefits currently not available to self-employed contributors. It is very important that if individuals are, in fact, working as employees on a contract of service, they should be covered for all the available entitlements. It is likely the case that there are certain sectors in which these benefits will be particularly important.

Employers should be aware that anyone who incorrectly treats a worker as self-employed will be liable for that worker's PRSI contributions along with the employer contributions that should have been paid to the Collector General. Individual workers can always contact the scope section of the Department when they believe they have been misclassified by an employer.

The European Commission is planning a new directive on improving working conditions in platform work. This would be a welcome addition to the legislative stock and it will help us in our efforts to eradicate this problem.

Finally, I am confident that the working group that will be established shortly and will be chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy English, will be an important development and that through its work it will carefully examine the remaining recommendations of the committee’s report. As well as this, it will be a place to which we can bring the other issues that were raised here tonight by the various Deputies.

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