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

To be very clear, the State does not facilitate it. The State expects anybody who is in employment to have the full protection of our employment legislation, and we are very clear on that. There are two agencies, Revenue and the Department of Social Protection, that do a well-recognised good job in this area. Our regime in Ireland is well recognised for protection of employees. It is something we are very proud of and put the resources into, and we will strengthen that.

We have also extended a lot of the benefits to self-employed people through social protection, and rightly so, because we have seen how they were left behind at the last financial recession, so we have made sure to extend that. That is something we have worked very clearly on and it is an agenda the Tánaiste has driven through the Department of Social Protection previously and now in our Department as well. That is very clear. The State will never support bogus employment or self-employment or anyone being forced into it. That is why this working group is carrying out a review to see if we can enhance that. We have sat down with Revenue and the Department of Social Protection to see if they need more resources to tackle the cases that are there, but we are very clear on this. As part of the work, we will end up with a much stronger communications campaign. There are certain key areas Deputy O'Reilly and others have identified, as the Government has as well, and there are certain areas that need to be addressed. We will deal with them. It is not the case, however, that we are sitting back and doing nothing. The legislation is there already, and we want to be very clear on that.

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