Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator and I also appreciate his comments. This is a fundamental matter for our society, as people define themselves by the work they do. It is a definition of status in society and their contribution to their families and community. I hope the message coming from everybody in this House is that it is completely unacceptable for people to be put into precarious and insecure positions by bad employers. The Minister is correct that some people put themselves in the line of fire because there is short-term financial gain. We know from the context of the economic crash that many people regret such a course of action. When they lost their positions, they had no redundancy payments or statutory redundancy, nor did they have an entitlement to jobseeker payments and other supports.

We have spoken about our hearts going out to people but my heart goes out to the trade union official who wants to represent these individuals but is prevented from doing so. Such people may be trying to organise a sector and working hard to try to engage, under the auspices of the Labour Court, and establish sectoral employment orders under legislation we introduced in 2015 to level the playing pitch and ensure everybody in the construction industry, for example, electricians or other tradespeople could be given access to the same legal minimum statutory pay rates, sick pay, pension schemes and so on. That has not been enabled for many people. According to the CSO, approximately one quarter of those working in the construction sector are self-employed with no employees. That amounts to thousands of people and they are not all genuine entrepreneurs. We all value the function of genuine entrepreneurs in society and we would not have the strong market economy that we have without those people taking those risks and working day and night to implement a vision. They employ people in good circumstances and on good contracts.

This legislation is as much for the decent businesses as it is for workers. It is about levelling that playing pitch and making sure an employment model is not so critically undermined as to ensure a race to the bottom, with good businesses being damaged. Focusing again on construction, too many businesses use the competitive advantage that this facilitates with impunity to get contracts - public contracts in some cases - when they are on a wholesale basis employing people through bogus self-employment contracts. It is not on and it should be unacceptable. I am aware of at least one individual working in the environs of these Houses who is taking a case currently with the assistance of the Minister's Department. This issue is close to home, although I will clearly not name any individuals because it would be entirely inappropriate. We are not hermetically sealed from the matter nonetheless and it cuts across every economic sector. I mentioned highly trained pilots in the transport sector earlier and it also affects construction workers, information technology professionals and financial services workers. I met people involved with legal services recently who are engaged with these kinds of arrangements as well. It is Hobson's choice as a person may want a job but will only get it on the basis that he or she is defined and registered as self-employed. So many people, particularly in the construction sector, only figure out that they are in bogus self-employment when they go looking for their rights or entitlements as the main contractor may have decided to use an online system to register those people as self-employed. That happens against their will and, in many cases, when these people are totally aware of the scenario.

I am making an eleventh hour appeal to the Minister. Based on her comments, there is some common ground. If she allows the Bill to pass, we can work with her to amend it. We have engaged in similar initiatives in recent years to the benefit of the quality of legislation emanating from the House. This House is particularly well equipped to do it because we are not as adversarial as the Dáil. We tend to take a more considered opinion of legislation, and I reflected on that during the short period when I was a Minister of State. It was often a pleasant experience to come here to listen to numbers of experts and people representing particular panels with considerable expertise, whether that was in administration, labour affairs, industry or commerce and so on. Senators brought some added value to the legislative process and we can do that here if the Minister continues to engage with us and discuss the Bill in more detail on Report Stage. We differ in some approaches to this but, broadly, we are of a similar mind.

There are some issues on which we will continue to have battles in this regard because we need to take a belt and braces approach to the matter. There is no point in just introducing additional administrative measures and tinkering at the edges, and there should be fundamental radical changes to the law in terms of how we define someone's employment status. All too many of the people engaged in these kinds of practices are getting away with them with absolute impunity and they must be hit in the pocket. They must learn that this is unacceptable and that their bottom line will be affected. It is the only language some people understand.