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

I have some minor issues regarding section 5. In regard to intermediary third parties, the Bill refers to functions which "are matters of form only and not of substance". Those terms are not defined anywhere in legislation and I have been advised by the Attorney General that the wording would lead to considerable debate and possibly a large amount of litigation which, obviously, none of us wishes to encounter in regard to the Bill.

In addition, there may be some misunderstanding of the powers of the Department in how it operates these matters. To be clear, under section 300 (2)(a)(vii) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, our deciding officers are empowered to determine who is or was the employer of an employed contractor. The deciding officers of the scope section can use this section of the Act to determine that the end user of a person engaged through an intermediary process is, in fact, the employer. That there is a middle man or woman, for want of a better term, does not change the fact that a person should be determined as a specific PRSI class or not. The deciding officer would be required for PRSI purposes to treat the worker as a direct employee and return the worker's and employer's PRSI status to what they ought to be under the current determination. That applies not only to all future payments, but also to payments backdated to when he or she began contracting with the firm.