Vol. 397 No. 7
17 Mr. Bell asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he has any estimate of the size of lumping activities at the end of 1989; if such activities are increasing or decreasing; the sectors of industry in which lumping takes place; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The practice of allocating blocks of work to self-employed persons — popularly known as "lumping"— is known to be a feature of the construction industry. My Department does not have statistics regarding the exent of this practice.
The use of sub-contractors has also been common in the forestry industry for some years and my information is that the practice is growing in service industries including, for example, the delivery of bread and milk.
My Department's interest in "lumping", and sub-contractors generally is:
(1) to ensure that they make insurance contributions as self-employed persons;
(2) that, if they are qualification certificate holders for unemployment assistance purposes, their net cash income from self-employment is assessed as means;
(3) that if they are signing on their entitlement to unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit as the case may be is reviewed having regard to the legal requirement that a person must be unemployed and available for work;
(4) if they have employees, that they are fulfilling their obligations under the Social Welfare Acts in relation to the keeping of records and the payment of social insurance contributions.
The Deputy will be aware that I recently introduced legislation requiring employers in the construction and forestry industries to notify me of sub-contractors engaged by them. This statutory provision, which applies from 1 January 1990, also requires subcontractors in the industries mentioned to notify me of persons engaged by them.
This is one of a number of measures that I have recently introduced to combat social welfare fraud.
