Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand the principle behind the recommendation and the spirit in which it is proposed. I have outlined the particular difficulties we have in asking Revenue to get into dealing with employment law. The Senator correctly noted that there is already provision in the legislation to address a situation where an employer might let somebody go and then hire two new people. She is correct that this does impact on employment law. One of the reasons we included it was to ensure there was no abuse of this legislation. Without it, I would have been very fearful that some scrupulous employer might have laid off a well-paid employee and then taken on two people on lower wages, thereby getting double the subsidy. Even though we did cross over into employment law with this provision, it was to ensure there was no abuse of the system by unscrupulous employers. We felt it was necessary to include this measure to protect the integrity of the scheme. That is the only reason we included it. The broader issue is not specific to the Revenue Commissioners.