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

I want to make two brief points before I wrap up. Senator Nash and I differ on some elements of the Bill. I think the if-and-when contracts issue is managed well but he disagrees. I am certainly willing to talk to him and to Senator Higgins in the coming days. If we can reach some accommodation, we certainly will do so. If we cannot, I hope we will not fall out over it. I think it is a good idea to have a review. Most legislation is supposed to be reviewed after 12 months but we are all busy; we move on and the next issue comes around. If there are any unintended pluses or minuses we should have a look at them. Perhaps we can agree on when that should happen and I can introduce it into a speech at some point before the recess.

There are two issues in the context of people declaring themselves to be self-employed, whether they do so willingly or otherwise. First, there is the loss of revenue that we could spend in a variety of ways. I do not know how much that loss is but even if it is only small, it is still money out of the taxpayer's pocket and it is in businesses' pockets instead, where it should not be. Second, we need equalisation across all of our social welfare schemes for self-employed and employed people. It should not matter whether a person creates his or her own job or works for Dunnes Stores. The employment rights should be same and access to social security should be the same. We started to move towards equalising some of the social security schemes. We are now moving to equalise some of the employment rights legislation. Not everybody agrees with me; even people on my side of the House. However, it is my view that the last thing to be done to equalise the situation is to remove the reason people declare themselves as being self-employed. If we can equalise that last platform, then there are no advantages any more to being self-employed or employed, other than the ability to direct one's own work, which comes with being truly self-employed. That is what self-employment should actually be all about. It is the creation of work and the ability to direct it. If the monetary difference was taken out of the equation, we would see that issue being addressed with a bit of a sledgehammer. That is for the future. We are going to address it with the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection and will find other ways of approaching it. I look forward to making my contribution before the committee.

This is significant legislation. It has been described as once in a generation. Senator Murnane O'Connor stated that people are watching tonight who are waiting in expectation to be able to ask their employers to put them on a particular band of hours reflective of the work they have done in the past 12 months. It will be a collective achievement and a job really well done by this Oireachtas if we can do that before Christmas.