More than a quarter of Irish people know someone who works without declaring some or all of their income to the authorities. But a similar number also refused to say whether they had received some or all of their income "cash-in-hand" from their employer within the last year, a new EU-wide survey has shown.
This compares with Sweden, Finland, Greece and the Netherlands, where all of those surveyed were willing to admit whether or not they had been paid cash-in-hand within the past year. Only Romanians, at 31 per cent, were more reluctant than the Irish to admit to this.
The survey, which was undertaken on behalf of the EU Commission among 1,000 Irish people in June of this year, reveals a range of contrasting attitudes to the issue of "undeclared" or "informal" employment.
More than one-third of respondents believed that the risk of being caught engaging in work without declaring this income was either very high or fairly high, while the same percentage thought the risk was either very small or fairly small.
More than one-third also said men and women were equally likely to carry out undeclared work, although more than one-third responded that they believed men were more likely than women to do so.