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Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Claims about bogus self-employment in construction 'grossly exaggerated'

The construction industry’s representative body did acknowledge a reluctance in contractors to directly employ workers and said the government needs to make this more attractive.

THE REPRESENTATIVE BODY for the construction industry has said claims of high levels of bogus self-employment in the sector have been “grossly exaggerated”.

Earlier this month a new construction-union called Connect pledged to eliminate what it described as the “scourge” of bogus self-employment in the building industry. The union claimed members were being forced by their employers to register as sole traders rather than being directly employed by the companies.

There have also been a number of small protests recently against the use of agencies and zero-hour contracts by construction companies.

Director general of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) Tom Parlon, told TheJournal.ie that there has been a move away from direct employment, not just in Ireland but internationally. However, he said the scale of this has been “grossly exaggerated”.

“There are a lot of self-employed people, specialist workers, who legitimately work in the industry. But what you have to understand is that if a contractor gets the 100 people he needs to work, he can only give them that work while the job is on. After that he doesn’t have work for them.

Traditionally, there was a facility where if you had to lay off people you could claim back 60% of the redundancy from the government. That was dropped entirely and the main reason it was dropped apparently is because you had big multinationals building call centres, getting grants to set them up and then two years later closing them down, claiming the redundancy and starting them up under a different name.

“And the construction industry lost out. There has been a disincentive for employing a massive number of people directly. If I employ people directly, then I have to factor in redundancy to my financial plans because I might not know if I have another job after this one is finished.”

Though he did not accept there was a “massive problem” in this area, he said his organisation is encouraging contractors to hire directly to give workers more security. The government will have to look at initiatives to make direct hiring more attractive to these firms in order for this to work, he said.

“Every construction project is obliged to pay the sectoral employment order [which set new rates of pay and made it compulsory for employers to provide a pension and sick pay scheme] and those rates are very high. We are working hard so that the construction industry is a good place to work.”

Read: Central Bank optimistic about Ireland’s future with full employment ‘in view’>

Read: Those who bought houses with major defects ‘should get a redress scheme’>

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    Mute Ed
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    May 19th 2021, 9:48 AM

    Unbeknownst? Time for these companies to be hammered for such “errors”.

    239
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    Mute John Murphy
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    May 19th 2021, 10:20 AM

    @Ed: That’s usually the case in leaks. The company often gets alerted by people who suffered from the leak a year or so after the fact.
    BTW this site is a handy way to search the lists of publicly known leaks: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

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    Mute Eugene Norman
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    May 19th 2021, 2:47 PM

    @John Murphy: my iPhone told me I was owned when I tried to log into a website the other day and suggested I change the password there. A government website as well but not in Ireland.

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    Mute SteveBuzzard
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    May 19th 2021, 10:19 AM

    “700,000 documents dating from 2014 to 2017 were stored in the folder, including some passports, drivers’ licenses and compliance-related forms”

    So nothing is private any more, all our private information is now floating around cyber space freely available to criminals.
    Will anybody be held to account?? will customers be compensated?? Joke of a country, can do nothing right. Those responsible should be face criminal charges.

    113
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    Mute Eugene Norman
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    May 19th 2021, 2:48 PM

    @SteveBuzzard: what’s the “country” got to do with a private company. They should have deleted most of this info though, according to GDPR rules.

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    Mute Phil Redmond
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    May 19th 2021, 3:20 PM

    @Eugene Norman: Not true. GDPR does not put any time scale on how long companies have to hold data. The Data Protection Act requires them to delete it 7 years after the end of the relationship with the individual so actually very little of it should have been deleted

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    Mute Franky Jefferson
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    May 19th 2021, 10:14 AM

    I thought they are supposed to delete verification documents after a certain period… Not keep them.

    Prosecutions? I imagine not of course.

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    Mute Peter Cavey
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    May 19th 2021, 10:22 AM

    @Franky Jefferson: yeah, all customer data can only be stored for a maximum of 6 months.

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    Mute Phil Redmond
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    May 19th 2021, 10:28 AM

    @Peter Cavey: Incorrect. GDPR does not put a time frame how long companies can hold you’re data. The Data Protection Act requires companies to delete data after 7 years

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    Mute M. Murphy
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    May 19th 2021, 2:26 PM

    @Peter Cavey: Incorrect. Best not comment without correct facts

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    Mute Eugene Norman
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    May 19th 2021, 3:02 PM

    @M. Murphy: People do be getting very heated about GDPR.

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    Mute Marty Lawless
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    May 19th 2021, 9:45 AM

    Was it leaky Leo

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    Mute Biscuits Patinkin
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    May 21st 2021, 9:32 AM

    @Marty Lawless: who?? Oh.. you mean Leako Varadkar

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    Mute D. Memery
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    May 19th 2021, 10:20 AM

    The statement that there is no evidence that the data was accessed rings false when you consider it was an external, independent company that found the data publicly accessible. Unless the server itself was publicly available on the cloud, a serious data security error in of itself, the data had to be accessed for it to have become publicly available.

    34
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    Mute SteveBuzzard
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    May 19th 2021, 10:20 AM

    “700,000 documents dating from 2014 to 2017 were stored in the folder, including some passports, drivers’ licenses and compliance-related forms”

    So nothing is private any more, all our private information is now floating around cyber space freely available to criminals.
    Will anybody be held to account?? will customers be compensated?? Joke of a country, can do nothing right. Those responsible should face criminal charges.

    13
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    Mute Phil Redmond
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    May 19th 2021, 10:38 AM

    @SteveBuzzard: Oh FFS don’t be so dramatic. Yes they will be held accountable. The company will be investigated and sanctioned by the Central Bank and the Data Protection Commissioner. As for compensation unless there is evidence that anyone has suffered a loss or damage as a result of the leak then no they will not be compensated as there is no loss or damage to be compensated for

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    Mute Dav Nagle
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    May 19th 2021, 10:46 AM

    The more info one has to provide the greater the leak! Convoluted EU nonsensical process management at its finest.

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    Mute Jim O Brien Tech
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    May 19th 2021, 1:45 PM

    Did you purposely forget to mention the Irish times to plug our own.

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