State made 54 rulings on employee status in favour of employers last year

In 2022, 54 Social Welfare Appeals Office decisions were in favour of employers, compared with five in 2021 and three in 2023. In the same three-year period, 15 decisions were made in favour of the worker. Picture: iStock

The number of State decisions in favour of employers regarding appeals of workers’ employment status increased by nearly 1,000% in 2022, according to new figures.

The new data, released to the Irish Examiner, shows that 54 such decisions were made in favour of employers that year, compared with just five in 2021 and three in 2023.

Some 15 decisions made by the Social Welfare Appeals Office — a body under the aegis of the Department of Social Protection, which decides appeals in terms of whether a worker is a direct employee or self-employed — were made in favour of the worker over the same three-year timeline.

The 54 decisions handed down by the appeals office in favour of employers is just under three times greater than the next-largest set of such decisions delivered in a single year over the past decade, that year being 2017 when 19 such decisions were made.

The number of such decisions did not break 10 in any of the other years.

The Social Welfare Appeals Office is the last office of appeal regarding employment status before a case becomes eligible to be heard by the courts.

It typically delivers judgements on appeals of decisions made by the Scope section of the Department of Social Protection, which has responsibility for determining what class of social insurance payments a worker should make.

Such Scope decisions have been crucial in the ongoing battle against the trend of bogus self employment, which sees employees of a company or body doing the same work as direct employees but being denied the same benefits, including sick and holiday pay, compassionate leave, and pension contributions.

It is unclear what case or cases gave rise to the jump in the number of decisions being made in favour of employers in 2022.

The department said that information regarding the sector of each decision is “not available”.

Since late 2021 the Department’s Scope section has been reviewing the employment status of 695 RTÉ workers in order to determine whether or not they had been correctly classified as either direct employees or contractors.

However, in a statement to the Irish Examiner, RTÉ said that only six of the decisions made to date by the department had been appealed to the Social Welfare Appeals Office in 2022 and 2023, and that only one of those appeals had been decided in favour of the broadcaster, which would suggest that the 54 decisions in question could not relate to the RTÉ review.

In 2016, the Scope decisions of 16 construction workers were overturned by the social welfare appeals office on appeal by architects firm JJ Rhatigan.

However, per the Department’s statistics only 6 cases were decided in favour of an employer that year.

The department had not replied to a query at the time of publication.