Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have no doubt but that the Deputy is well plugged into that group. It is representative of all parts of society. It is important we continue to focus on the area to see if we can enhance and strengthen our legislation and our regime. Part of the work of that group over recent months has been to assess the situation at the moment and the numbers that we believe are in this sector and to see if Revenue and the Department of Social Protection have the right staff and the extra staff they need to be able to deal with the current situation. They say they do.

There are delays in the system when a case goes into a review, an appeal or suchlike, which can be very lengthy. Most cases are now dealt with in, I think, less than six weeks. That is the initial judgment. It is always an individual assessment of every individual case. The working group is trying to see if we can add to that and make it better.

In fairness, the initiatives in this area have been updated over many years at different times to reflect changes in work. The big change at the moment - it has been going on for the past couple of years - is platform work. There are changes afoot at EU level as well. We will take all that on board with the new EU directive and bring it through that working group and back, with a recommendation to the Tánaiste through the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, as well. It is important that we will act on that if need be. A part of that is gathering the evidence and seeing what sectors we can focus on. There are often phrases used like those Deputy O'Reilly has just used that this is a major problem. The research does not always show that, but wherever the issue arises we want to stamp it out. The Tánaiste is very clear on this. It denies people their rights when it comes to supports from the Department of Social Protection or any other bodies. In addition, it causes loss of revenue to the State.

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