Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Acting Leader knows, yesterday was May Day, a day of celebration and solidarity for workers and a day to recognise the achievements of our trade union movement. One of the most important sectors of our economy is construction, where unions, including my own union of SIPTU, have fought valiantly to establish a sectoral employment order. This is an order to underpin rates of pay and decent benefits, for example, pensions and sick pay, and it puts a floor under the industry. It is essential for the construction industry to work well. However, the order is being undermined more each week by the significant issue of bogus self-employment, whereby workers are denied all of the benefits I mentioned – pay rates, pensions, sick pay and, God forbid, death in service benefits. As we know, deaths occur in the construction industry.

Yesterday, I was alerted to an issue at a public project on the north quays in Waterford involving between 35 and 40 workers. They have basically been told that the only way they can work is via bogus self-employment. They are not allowed to be employees. There are two aspects to this situation. A contractor – DPPS Contracts – has subcontracted to a company called Enagh, which conveniently is wholly owned by DPPS Contracts. It is a matter of people using contract companies to distance themselves from what is effectively an illegal practice.

What is shocking is that, when my union, SIPTU, highlighted the issue of public funds being used to support bogus self-employment, the Department of Social Protection had no interest in it. The Department was given a collective complaint, but it wrote back to SIPTU and said that, if any of those workers wanted to make individual complaints, they could do so. How on Earth can that be the case? I will be frank with the Acting Leader, in that this points to the fact that the Government does not get the seriousness of the issue of bogus self-employment. My comrades in the trade union movement are furious. Public funds being spent on a key project in Waterford and used to subsidise companies engaged in the practice of bogus self-employment can never be acceptable. It is incumbent on this House to address the issue. I ask the Acting Leader to write to the Department of Social Protection. I would be happy to provide her office with the details of this case. It cannot be let stand that, when this increasingly widespread practice is brought to the attention of the Department of Social Protection, the Department basically shows no interest in it. We need a Department that is proactive and maintains decent standards in the industry. I would hope that we all agree with those decent standards, but the reality is that the Government is not doing enough to uphold them. We have workers on the north quays project in Waterford who have been forced into bogus self-employment. We can, and we must, do better.