Where does employment drift into exploitation?

LITTLE things provide clues as to the direction the country is going.

This week it was revealed that there are 2m people in work for the first time since 2009.

There was also positive news about immigration.

A total of 79,300 people of all nationalities moved into the country in the year to last April, up from 69,300 the previous year. Of the new arrivals, 21,000 represented Irish-born people returning home.

The figures demonstrate that a new day has well and truly dawned after the night of recession.

The Government, and Fine Gael in particular, can with some justification claim that policies it pursued are now bearing fruit.

And the growth is not confined to any one sector — such as construction — but occurring throughout the economy.

Similarly, the growth is not confined to Dublin, but can be seen across the main population centres of the State. Unemployment remains a reality for around 8% of the population but opportunities continue to open up.

There was further proof of this in the CAO offers which were made last Monday.

The courses associated with the economic recovery are in much higher demand. Architecture, engineering and other construction-related courses, along with business, are all attracting greater numbers.

Notwithstanding the rain clouds of Brexit gathering on the horizon, or the fragile nature of the world economy, there are reasons to cheerful. Not everything about the labour market, however is positive or welcome.

For one thing, the nature of employment has gone through some serious changes. It is now accepted in most quarters that the concept of a job for life is past its sell-by date.

“Flexibility” is the buzz word in the labour market, and making it easier for employers to hire and fire in the modern economy makes sense. But where does flexibility drift across the line into exploitation?

Some recent high-profile cases of changed work practices raise questions about the quality of employment for those who are at work. Recently, a high-tech delivery company attempted to change work practices which would see delivery drivers paid per delivery rather than by the hour.

The company, which operates in five Irish cities, attempted the new work practice on a pilot basis in parts of Britain, but pulled back in the face of major opposition, which came even from a Tory government.

Deliveroo was just the latest start-up tech company to attempt to change work practices which effectively force employees to operate as self-employed. This is, in effect, bogus self-employment and is prevalent right across the economy.

At home, a report from the think tank TASC in June outlined how this was a growing problem. In the area of construction alone, according to TASC, those classified as self-employed increased from 25% in 2006 to 38% today.

Last Monday 96FM’s Deirdre O’Shaughnessey reported on how the practice is now growing in the tech sector. The story concerned Cork-based firm Globetech, which employs 480 people in developing high-tech solutions for areas like processing parking tickets.

O’Shaughnessy interviewed “Marie” who has worked in the company for nearly four years on short-term contracts. She would like to be employed, but has been told that she must remain self-employed and work on that basis.

“When it started I didn’t know how long it would go on,” she said.

She attempted to have her situation regularised. Others doing her highly-skilled job in the company are treated as employees, yet she has remained on short-term contracts. “When I asked they said ‘no, I can’t have my contract reviewed’.”

(Globetech issued a statement in which it said that fewer than 10% of those working for the company are classified self-employed).

Marie is among the thousands coming to this country to work, but her predicament is not confined to those described as non-nationals. She is highly skilled and a mother who would like to settle down here.

Despite being officially self-employed, workers like Marie are effectively employees. A genuinely self-employed person would be free to offer their services to more than one entity, but that is not the case here.

To all intents and purposes, the classification of “self employed” is entirely bogus, but perfectly legal.

As solicitor John Boylan, who works in the area of employment law, points out: “Self-employed people pay their own tax, their own social insurance, they are not entitled to sick pay or to holiday pay and if the position doesn’t work out they cannot take any action for unfair dismissal.”

The self- employed person would also run into problems in qualifying for the job-seeker’s allowance in the event of not having a contract renewed.

What effect does this have?

On the employer’s side it saves on costs, including PRSI and pension contributions. For the employee it heightens job insecurity.

Also, crucially, it prevents the prospect of long-term planning, such as buying a home. Banks will not lend to somebody whose employment is so insecure.

That, in turn, has an effect on society at large. Preventing a considerable cohort of maturing people from putting down roots can only have an adverse impact on the character of communities.

The State is not blind to any of this but the worrying thing is its response.

The system of bogus self-employment ensures there is a loss to the exchequer of huge sums in employer PRSI contributions, from €20m in the construction industry to an estimated €80m across the economy.

Yet an employer can decide to classify an employee as a self-employed contractor by merely clicking an option in the Revenue’s online system.

The classification of whether a worker should be an employee or self-employed is called Scope and located in the Department of Social Protection. “

If a subsequent investigation deems that the categorisation was effectively bogus and the person should be reclassified as an employee, there is no penalty for the employer.

For some, the classification of self-employed suits perfectly and is appropriate.

The problem is the growing number that are being forced into that category. It represents a small but significant shift in wealth from labour to capital at a time when in equality is growing exponentially.

This, in turn, is being reflected across the world politically through disaffection with mainstream politics and flight to the extremes.

More jobs in the economy are welcome, but it’s time the Government began addressing the drift in employment practices that are unhealthy for society.

Small things show where the country is going, and it shouldn’t take much to correct an obvious wrong.

Michael Clifford

Ireland's Mideast origins for our hunter-gathering genes

Now is the time to find big, ripe, juicy blackberries, fresh and unwormed. Picture: Damien Enright

I wonder were the bones found in a cave in Co Mayo earlier this month those of hunter-gatherers, or are they that old? Once the archaeologist have dated them, the geneticists might decide to DNA analyse them, and find their genetic history. Who knows what information about the journey of mankind to this sacred isle such bones might reveal.

In 2015, study of the remains of a woman who died 5,200 years ago in Co Down revealed that she was of Middle Eastern extraction. She would have been a member of a group of Stone Age farmers, our forbearers, themselves descendants of the first agriculturists in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that flow into the Persian Gulf. She had black hair and brown eyes, typical of Middle Eastern people. Middle Eastern DNA —perhaps Syrian? — is in our blood.

The first cereals were grown in Syria 9,000 years ago; the first hybrid trees in Jordan, 2,000 years earlier. Her ancestors arrived in Ireland, bringing with them cereals, livestock and pottery, and the colourful, edible snail we find everywhere, but often close to the sea.

The banded snail, Capaea nemoralis, most likely arrived in Ireland with Mesolithic migrants moving west. Evidence of its presence begins 8,000 years ago, and there is a continuous fossil record from that time. Its DNA matches that of banded snails found only in the Pyrenees, on the route Mesolithic migrants would probably have taken to Ireland. They may have carried them as a fresh food source.

In tandem with the study of this Stone Age woman’s remains, the Trinity College/ Queen’s University team studied the DNA of three men buried on Rathlin Island, Co Antrim 1,000 to 1,500 years after she died.

Using a technique called whole- genome analysis to ‘read’ not only the unique characteristics of individuals but to compare the DNA from all four bodies, the scientific teams aimed to arrive at a broader understanding of migration and settlement.

The three men in Rathlin lived in the Bronze Age and were descendants of peoples that originated in the Pontic Steppe in southern Russia, the Baltic States, Poland and Central Europe. That we have some of their DNA sequences is beyond doubt.

They carried a distinctive genetic disorder called haemochromatosis, a hereditary variant which causes the body to store too much iron in the liver, heart and pancreas. The variant is evident in almost all Irish DNA, so universal that it has been called the Celtic disease.

They also carried the gene that allows adults to digest milk —useful in the largely dairy-product economy that Ireland has become. Many other races become intolerant to milk after infancy. They were more like the Irish of today. Their eyes were often blue; their antecedents, the farmers, had brown eyes. Their language may even reflect an early form of our national language.

Early newcomers did not compete with those already on the land but became Irish themselves.

These northern Europeans brought the Bronze Age — bronze ploughshares, metal tools and craftsmanship in gold. By the time of their arrival, the farmers would already have subsumed, or integrated with, the hunter-gatherer population that preceded them.

So, the ‘Irish’ moved from hunting-gathering, to farming, to a metal age culture.

The human story is a narrative of movement and migration, and an exchange of genes and cultures that over-ride border controls.

After the Bronze Age came the Iron Age and the legendary Celts, with their flowing hair and flowing robes. They began their migration out of Central Europe in 1,000BC, possibly under some pressure from the Roman Empire, and began to reach Ireland from about 600BC onward. Before long, the old Bronze Age culture was supplanted but, of course, farming never stopped.

Another migration, another step forward, added DNA and, possibly, hybrid vigour. With the Celts, we became more technologically, artistically and linguistically sophisticated.

What these lately-discovered Co Mayo bones will tell us is not known. Perhaps their owners were Stone Age farmers, Bronze Age metal workers, bardic Celts or perhaps they lived in the ancient days of picking berries and hunting giant elk, or knocking trees and creating arable land, like the Ceide Fields in Mayo, 6,000 years old.

Damien Enright

Cost of going to court reinforces inequalities

Like a posh hotel, the civil courts are open to everyone, but only the wealthy can afford to go   there. Michael Clifford highlights some recent cases that show the prohibitive cost of justice

High Court Judge Mr Justice Max Barrett. Picture: Courtpix

Maureen Lawless is in her 70s and in danger of losing her home. She was not among those who made a disastrous decision to buy property during the years of the bubble. She did not drink herself into debt. She is not a gambler.

She did, however, take what in retrospect was a huge gamble. She sought justice through the courts on the basis that she felt she had been grievously wronged. Such a course of action is supposed to be a cherished right for citizens in a democracy. In truth, it’s a sham.

Last month, the High Court granted a judgement against Maureen Lawless for €176,433. This was money accumulated in legal fees by her former solicitor who had taken on her case in 2010. The case involved a land auction in which Ms Lawless felt she had been wronged. The case was subsequently settled. Ms Lawless had made an initial payment of €5,000 to the solicitor, Larry Burke of Cavan firm Burke, Hunt and Co, but hadn’t coughed up anything else since. The accumulated bill also included fees for a senior and junior counsel, coming to about €64,000.

At the hearing in which judge Max Barrett granted the judgement against Ms Lawless, she couldn’t even afford representation, the court heard. Judge Barrett also noted that she was in danger of losing her home as a result of her foray into the legal world. Despite all that, the judge said he was legally bound to grant the judgement. Ms Lawless was a competent adult who had retained legal counsel and that comes with a cost.

However, the judge is not an island and he couldn’t help noticing the injustice of a system alleged to be route to justice. Of the size of the fees he said: “These are enormous, though not at all untypical, fees which point to a continuing deficiency in our legal system… proper legal representation, at least in civil proceedings, is increasingly a boon that is properly affordable by the few who are rich, and a bane to be feared by the many who are not.”

That, in a nutshell, is the kernel of the scandal of legal fees in this country. The courts, like the Ritz, are open to everybody, but confined to the wealthy.

In this, the system in which civil law is administered serves not as a great leveller but an instrument to reinforce inequities in society.

Judge Barrett’s intervention in the Lawless case was the second time in recent months that he referenced the cost of going to court. In April, he ruled on an application for a firm to provide security of costs, which involves putting up money that can be used to pay legal fees in the event of losing an action.

The action involves a Cork-based training company called Euro Safety which is suing Solas, the state training agency which was formerly Fás. Euro Safety claims it has lost business as a result of blowing the whistle on bad practices in Fás in 2002, which led to a damning report on the state agency.

The Cork firm believes it is entitled to compensation for the manner in which its business has allegedly suffered.

In response, Solas asked the court to force Euro Safety to put up €600,000 as security in case it loses the case. This figure includes €220,000 in solicitor’s costs and €108,500 for a senior counsel for an estimated 20-day hearing. That’s over one hundred grand for the barrister for a month’s work.

The judge pointed out that Euro Safety did not have access to those kind of funds. “The case highlights, yet again, the need for a systemic solution to the present crushing cost of High Court litigation,” he said.

He refused the Solas application on the basis that the case was in the public interest. But what of a case that was just in the interests of a private company seeking justice?

Legal practitioners get all sniffy when judges like Barrett comment on what is plainly obvious before their eyes. It’s regarded as letting the side down or, more often, bad grace from somebody who toiled in the lucrative vineyard themselves before accepting a state job and plum pension. An alternative view might be that the bench provides a wider lens to examine what citizens are subjected to when they opt to go to court.

The sniffy attitude was also deployed against former Justice Minister Alan Shatter when he made attempts to reform the system. In parallel to his political career, Mr Shatter had enjoyed a lucrative legal one. And now he was spoiling the party for everybody else. Again, perhaps the former minister was in a position to look at the system from the point of view of citizens, rather than partitioners.

Mr Shatter’s grand plans were shredded through assiduous lobbying by the business and, while the former minister was not up to the job in other areas of his brief, his drive to reform the system was sadly lost on his departure from office. What emerged instead was a watered down Legal Services Regulation Act which is due to come into force in the coming months.

One of the few reforms in that act will ensure that costs will have to be more transparent. No longer will citizens find out well into a process that they have accumulated crippling debts.

The act makes provision for a review of fees, written notice in clear language, and a new set of principles for adjudicating on costs. The whole thing, however, is a long way from the changes initially envisaged by Shatter.

His plans were lifted to a large extent from an excellent Competition Authority report in 2006 which highlighted the problems with the restrictive practices and lack of transparency within the two arms of the business.

Another recent case illustrated another aspect to the charging of fees. Costs in a medical negligence case have been contested in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal over the last year. At issue are elements to the cost bill which include a claim for a solicitor’s instruction fee of €485,000, which the taxing master originally reduced to €276,000. The firm in question, Augustus Cullen Law of Wicklow appealed the ruling in the High Court, where it lost, and more recently in the Court of Appeal, where it won.

Another element of the costs was the fee for the senior counsel involved Denis McCullough. He had claimed a “brief fee” of €125,000, because of the “novelty and complexity” of the case. A brief fee is awarded for reading oneself into the case. Thereafter, his daily fee was €3,500 per day.

The court heard that Mr McCullough subsequently accepted a reduced brief fee of €65,000 and that was no longer contested. So the senior counsel accepted his fee to be about half what he had originally charged. This is not particularly unusual in the Law Library, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it.

But is there any other line of work where a practitioner simply drops their initial fee by about half for no particular reason other than its size is contested? One thing’s for sure, that’s nice work if you can get it.

Michael Clifford

Remembering John Wayne

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

"I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that's the way I am."

"Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway."

"Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity - and I don't mean simple - it'll be good, and the public will know it."

On my tombstone write: ‘Ugly, strong and dignified.’

John Wayne (1907-1979)

We don't appreciate the gems on our doorstep

How is it that so many people dream of seeing the wonders of faraway places while often ignoring gems which are virtually on their doorstep?

You will meet Dubliners who know little or nothing of the Phoenix Park; Killarney folk who have never been out on the world-famous lakes, or climbed Carrantuohill, and Corkonians who have never experienced the marvel that is Garinish Island.

I recently revisited Garinish, in Bantry Bay, having previously been there more than 30 years ago, and the delights of this island garden, just off Glengarriff, came flooding back. It was a warm, sunny day in August and I could sense it was going to be another special day in a special place.

Our boatman, Kieran, highlighted some of the natural features of this lush corner of Ireland and was soon pointing to a white-tailed sea eagle perched on top of a tree. A pair released in Killarney National Park has been nesting in Garinish for about four years and they recently produced a chick which can be seen flying over the island. The nest can be seen easily, but people are asked not to go too near it or disturb the eagles in any way.

The eagles are an attraction in their own right around Glengarriff which also has a common seal colony. We only saw one seal, a well-fed lazy specimen soaking up the sun on the rocks and oblivious to boats and visitors. Bees were also numerous there as they went about their work of pollination. The late screen star Maureen O’Hara had a home in Glengarriff but the real appeal of this place is its natural environment.

The minute you step ashore on Garinish you sense a sort of latter-day Garden of Eden, with all sorts of shrubs, flowers and trees crowding in on you. You can quickly walk around the 37 acres but it’s best to take your time, breathe the fragrant air and absorb it.

This is a huge ornamental garden of tropical plants, made possible by the humid Gulf Stream climate. The most notable feature is, perhaps, the Italianate garden, the work of the former owner of the island, Annan Bryce, and Harold Peto, an architect and garden designer.

On the occasion of our previous visit, rhododendrons and azaleas were in full bloom, as it was earlier in the year, but this time a kaleidoscope of summer colour adorned the scene. Very soon, the colours will change again with the coming of autumn. Lots of Irish people and overseas tourists were on the island.

The foundations of what’s being enjoyed today by thousands of visitors were laid around 80 years ago. The island was bequeathed to the State, in 1953, and is now under the control of the Office of Public Works. Well worth a visit.

Donal Hickey

Dublin named world's third friendliest city

                             Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge

Dublin and Galway have been named among the world's ten friendliest cities by readers of Condé Nast Traveler.

The city placed third on the list, behind Charleston in South Carolina and Sydney, Australia - and just ahead of Queenstown, New Zealand.

"We had the best recommendations on where to go and what to see from the locals," said another visitor. "Better than any guide book."

"I've never been somewhere with friendlier drinkers," added a third.

Condé Nast Traveler's Top 10 friendliest cities:

1 Charleston, South Carolina

2 Sydney, Australia

3 Dublin, Ireland

4 Queenstown, New Zealand

5 Park City, Utah

6 Galway, Ireland

7 Savannah, Georgia

8 Krakow, Poland

9 Bruges, Belgium

10 Nashville, Tennessee

The list was complied based on Conde Nast Traveler's Readers' Choice Survey, taken by some 128,000 readers in 2015, according to the magazine.

"Just look at this city," it says of Galway. "It's hard not to be charmed."

Live music, pubs and food "enchanted" its readers, the travel bible adds. "These are the friendliest people I have ever met," commented one reader.

Galway was named the world's friendliest city by readers of another US publication, Travel + Leisure, last year, with Dublin ranking third and Cork fourth.

"Again and again, our research shows us that the friendliness of our people is one of our unique selling points," said Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland.

"It is the warm welcome and the ‘craic’ here that resonates with our overseas visitors and makes our cities, and the island of Ireland, such a great choice for a short break or holiday."

Meanwhile, Condé Nast Traveler's list of the world's unfriendliest cities was topped by Newark, followed by Tijuana, Mexico and Oakland in California.

Pól Ó Conghaile

'Whatever “it” is, Ireland has “it” in spades'

'There’s more to life than the weather, and whatever “it” is, Ireland has “it” in spades'

Australian born of Indian parents, Shampa Lahiri explores the migrant life and her love of her adopted country on The Women’s Podcast

I first came here in 1997 and back in those days very young school children used to stop and stare at me in the street. I was here during the last heady days of Mary Robinson’s presidency when the air of optimism and opportunity was palpable. It rained every single day, and yet every second car driving down the road was a convertible. This place captured my imagination like no other. A place where the weather was so awful and yet the people were so cheerful, I just had to come back and find out why.

There are many reasons why migrants leave. We leave our homes, our families, our friends and possessions. We leave our entire life’s worth. In The Irish Times series New to the Parish we read about some of these reasons - about adventure and opportunity, fear and persecution, love, sacrifice and hope. But regardless of our reasons for leaving, there is no doubt in my mind, that the life of a migrant is harder in almost every respect.

We have no family response units to resuscitate us with tea and sympathy when things go wrong. We live parallel lives, the lives we are trying to lead, the lives that we aspire to lead, versus the lives we should have led had we stayed and not broken our parents’ hearts. So when you encounter a foreigner who can’t quite speak English, who is lost in the street or who is struggling with some menial bureaucratic task, please remember this anguish. Not all of us are welfare shopping radicals plotting destruction. Most of us are here trying to lead a better life, we are trying to be better people. And when things go wrong, as they invariably do, it makes us question not just whether we should have gotten out of bed that morning, but whether we made the right life choice. Our successes here may be greater, but so too are our failures.

I was born in Australia of Indian parents. I was raised in between two cultures and I was effectively denied a cultural identity by both. People would always ask me “But where are you actually from?” It is a question I could never really answer because I didn’t really belong anywhere. Here in Ireland I am asked that same question and yet the undercurrent is of genuine curiosity, almost verging on incredulity. I think its because most of the Irish can’t quite believe that us migrants choose to live here when we could be sunning ourselves in warmer climes. But there is more to life than the weather, and whatever “it” is, Ireland has “it” in spades.

The Irish welcome that you are all so famous for is real. To hear my name pronounced correctly every day is a joy that I cannot overstate. That you would take the time and effort to say it properly means the world to me. To walk down the street is such a simple thing. But to do it without the threat or fear of physical violence and racial vilification unveiled is an incredible freedom. And the day that I swore allegiance to the Irish State and became an Irish citizen is one of the most defining moments of my life. Having been denied a cultural identity for so long, I now get to choose. And I choose Ireland.

While many countries try and fail to promote multiculturalism, the Irish succeeds. I think its because the fabric of your cultural identity is so strong that you don’t fear change. But I also think its because virtually every Irish family has itself suffered the wretched effects of exodus. Virtually everyone misses a son or daughter, a sister or brother, a friend or family member who has made the same decision we made to leave. I think people are kind to me here because they hope that someone will be kind to their child living the migrant experience somewhere else, a cultural “paying it forward” if you will. But whatever the reasons, I am incredibly grateful for the warmth and generosity which has characterised my time in this wonderful place. I know I will always be a blow in, but now when people ask me where I’m from I say “Dublin”.

20 years I’ve been cartwheeling around the world and sometimes when I wake up in the morning in that split second before consciousness I have to remind myself which city I am waking up in. Every day I try and anchor myself to this place, I try and make myself relevant because if I don’t, I fear that I might disappear and no one will notice, that I am lost to one life and invisible in the other.

If there is any advice that I can give to those who are new to the parish it is this: do not be invisible. You are valuable. Be valuable, contribute, give back to the communities in which you live. But above all else, be proud. Be proud of the decisions you have made and what you have achieved because not many people have the guts to buy a one way ticket. You did. You have courage and determination and you have proven that you can be fearless. So be proud.

But with pride comes humility and we cannot demand the same benefits that derive from birth right. We are not Irish. We must not expect to be first in the queue or place the same demands on the Irish State that the Irish are entitled to take for granted. We have to earn these rights, whether it be the right to housing, medical care, education and employment.

So one final piece of advice - earn your place in Irish society, show people that you deserve to be here, show them how valuable you can be. We are at a critical point in time in the public perception of immigration. We need to be a part of this conversation, not by marching for more rights or by placing further demands on an already burdened State, but by showing, by our conduct, that we can advance, not just our own self interests, but Irish society as a whole. And sometimes we just need to accept that we will, and should, be at the back of the queue.

20 years I’ve been gone and I still can’t lose this accent. 20 years and people still ask me if I will ever go home. It’s another question I struggle to answer and I struggle with it the most when I am standing at the airport clutching my Irish passport in one hand and waving goodbye to my parents with the other. Every year that we are away, their lives go on and we become just that little bit more invisible to each other. Every day they struggle and we are not there to help, another anguish that we bear.

Why do we stay? Why do we stay and suffer these distances, these endless airport goodbyes? Well, I wont presume to answer this question for anyone else, nor am I naïve enough to assume that my experiences can be generalised for all. But I will try and answer this question for myself.

I stay because here I am not just tolerated, but I am welcomed, I am embraced. By the passport officer who says “Welcome home” every time I fly back into Dublin airport and by the woman who chased me down Grafton Street one day to ask me what brand of fake tan I use. I am embraced by the vast majority of Irish people who see me not simply as a colour, but as a fellow human being who is just trying to be that better person. I stay because of my wonderful husband from Donegal, because he is, by far, my greatest joy. I stay for a hundred different reasons which serve every day to wash away the doubt and recriminations that never really leave you once you make that decision to go.

After all these years, I understand the cheerfulness and that it is often bittersweet, especially when it rains. And I stay because I know I will never find anywhere quite as wonderful as Dublin. I am incredibly lucky. I am incredibly grateful. And I love reading New to the Parish” because it makes me realise that I am not alone in my gratitude.

So I will finish by saying thank you. Thank you to everyone involved in the publication of New to the Parish. Thank you for giving us migrants a positive voice. To all the people whose stories have featured in the column, thank you for sharing your wonderful adventures. We are meeting you mid-flight, and I wish you great joy and great success in your journeys. And finally to Ireland, to the Irish, thank you for letting us into the house with dignity, for letting us sit at your table with grace and respect. There are not enough words, in either our languages or in yours, to express our gratitude.

You can download individual episodes of The Women’s Podcast on Soundcloud, Stitcher and iTunes

Shampa Lahiri