Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to declare an interest. As a former SIPTU official I know at first hand that everything Mr. Fleming has said is right and accurate. One of my first experiences of being a trade union official took place in Rossaveal in Galway in 2007. I was a fairly innocent and green trade union official who tried to help some Egyptian fishermen but I lost on a technicality. I have spent more than ten years as a trade union official and in all that time I have never met people who were more exploited than the fishermen. I have every confidence that this committee will tackle the issue because we have worked very well on other issues. If we do not deal with this matter as a body politic, then there will be an inquiry in 20 or 30 years like the inquiry into mother and baby homes. At that time we will be asked why, as a political class, we failed to deal with this scandal. Let members be under no illusion that this is bonded labour or slavery and I saw it at first hand. Regardless of our political differences, I do not believe anyone on this committee would stand over such a situation. It raises a question that I will put to Mr. Fleming or Ms McGinley and I urge them not to answer my question in a party political way. Why has there been a lack of political will to deal with the problem? My theory is that the State authorities do not want to know because they know it would open a Pandora's box.

They know they will be opening a roll of shame that would show them up for their complete failure to intervene. Therefore they would rather just keep playing along. We have State actors, Departments and civil servants playing along saying there is nothing to see here when we know there is something to see here that is shocking and shames the country. We are a country that sent our people overseas for years and here we are turning our backs on the weakest and most vulnerable workers. We cannot even allow room to legislate for them to give them a modicum of safety and respect.

I would like to see representatives of NERA appear before the committee. I have been a frustrated trade union official for years, but there is something scandalous here. I want accountability. The people in NERA have turned their backs on these workers for years. They cannot say they did not know because Mr. Fleming and his colleagues in the ITF along with my colleagues in SIPTU and the people in the MRCI have flagged this. Let us consider the statistics. One in two workers has a real fear over safety at work. Where is the State? It is nowhere to be seen.

Earlier we discussed our priorities for the rest of the year. I request that we not only write immediately for this time-banded review but that we call these people in as an issue of the utmost urgency. This goes beyond anything else the committee has been dealing with. We are dealing with slavery happening throughout the State. My next question may be a loaded question, but I must ask it. Is our fishing industry modelled on this slavery model? Is that how it operates? If it is, I for one do not want anything to do with it.