Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am covering for my colleague, Senator Butler, who is unable to be present because of the snow in his area. Apparently there are eight inches of snow around Athboy in County Meath today. I have not done the level or research that I would do on an issue in my own area, but nonetheless I have had a look at it over the past couple of hours. I commend Senators Nash and Humphreys and the Labour group on raising this issue and on putting this Bill forward. No one could possibly disagree with the sentiment and intention of the Bill. At its heart is an effort to do away with inequality and there are seriously well-intentioned motives behind this Bill. It seeks to define in law the employment relationship and the relevant tests and to apply that employment status to every enactment unless the enactment has a contrary intention. It seeks to define false self-employment and provides that disputes as to whether an employment relationship exists be referred to the director general of the Workplace Relations Commission. The Bill empowers the Revenue Commissioners to determine that arrangements calculated to misrepresent any work or service as being executed under a contract for services rather than a contract of service is a tax avoidance transaction, and provides that PRSI in this instance should be treated as tax for that purpose.

It will be for the Minister to respond for the Government as such but it is not immediately clear to me that the Bill will provide any additional protection or improve the current legal basis for determining employment status. Perhaps pre-legislative scrutiny would be a good idea where this Bill is concerned, as with any other Bill.The Bill appears to describe much of what is already covered in existing legislation and case law, drawing substantially from current codes of practice. The existing key test to define employment status properly has developed, as Senator Nash is no doubt aware, from a significant body of case law. The question of whether an individual is engaged under either a contract of service or a contract for services is a question of fact and general law. The Government has, in a report, already reported on the use of intermediary-type structures and self-employment arrangements, and the implications of that for social welfare and tax revenues. That was published in January of this year. It sets out a number of proposals, and no doubt the Minister of State will go into those. I do not wish, especially because of the conditions outside, to prolong my contribution but there is no doubt that that will be part of the Minister of State's response.

There is certainly a question as to whether there is a significant problem to be addressed. The existing mechanisms for dealing with false self-employment, including the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, and scope section, do not encounter significant levels of false self-employment. That may be a result of the topic that we are talking about. It may suggest that the prevalence of false self-employment is overstated or that people are not reporting it. We need to get to the bottom of those facts. The data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, quarterly national household survey, record 312,000 individuals as self-employed in 2017, or 15% of total employment. This is consistent with the average levels of self-employment within the EU. The evidence does not show an issue. We have no alternative but to use the CSO figures for this type of statistic. It is still a very important area, which I think the Senator quite rightly raises. I will allow the Minister of State to respond to it, but I commend the Senator on the general thrust of the Bill, which I think is very well-intentioned, and it is an important area to look at.