Mr. Dermot Conway:

Traditionally, prior to the commencement of this scheme, the basic paperwork that had to be on a vessel had to include the fishing documents of the vessel - the certificate of registration, the licence, the logbook, the Marine Survey Office logbook - along with the basic safety training cards for each member of the crew. On foreign vessels, there would have been identification papers because of language issues. With the scheme having come into play, it is not entirely clear to what extent the Navy, in particular, has communicated to the owners that they must have a certain type of paperwork on board. Likewise, an awful lot of the back-office work documents of a trawler, such as payslips and accounts, would not be on board. Those documents would tend to be at the owner's place of business or work and would not be on the boat at all.

With regard to identification documents for migrant non-EEA workers, they must have their basic safety training course card which is issued by Bord Iascaigh Mhara. The card is not transferable from another jurisdiction to this one. One has to acquire it in this jurisdiction. The second document one would expect crew to have on board is the identification paper.

Certainly, the question has never been asked of me whether the non-EEA fishermen have to have their letters of authorisation on board. I am frequently asked to send on a copy of the letter of authorisation because the owner has lost it. I have frequently been asked to send it on because the crew member has lost it but I have never been asked whether the crew member has to have it at sea. The answer is that I have never come across a legal requirement for the non-EEA person to have it at sea. I have never been asked whether the owner or master has to ensure the non-EEA crew member has it at sea. It is a curious question because, ultimately, this is the original atypical worker scheme, with the fishermen added on. The original atypical worker scheme applied to a totally different type of business, such as a restaurant. In that case, the office is in the restaurant. It would be expected that the documentation would be available there.

As I said, I would be very interested to know whether the 70 fishermen on board the vessels in question had a visa but did not have the letter of authorisation. Those are obviously two distinct documents. Not having paperwork and being illegally on board is one matter but not having paperwork and being legally on board is an entirely different matter. I do not know the answer because I had not heard the number mentioned in any way before.

The other question I was asked was about the agents, particularly in the Philippines. Egypt and the Philippines are the two main locations from which the non-EEA fishermen are coming. That is not an exclusive list but those are the main two. When we first got involved with the visa scheme, we were attending a meeting with the WRC and I had come across several so-called manning agencies in the Philippines, not Egypt. It was stated that for the fishermen to get a visa to leave the Philippines to work for an owner in Ireland, they had to be registered with a manning agency. The manning agency, in turn, was looking for 80% of all the wages to be repatriated to the Philippines. Ostensibly, discounting the agency fee, the money was going to the family of the fisherman. Ultimately, when we consulted the WRC, as Patrick Murphy has already indicated, it made it abundantly clear that this is not a relationship that would be tolerated by it. Certainly as far as the IFPO was concerned, that was communicated to its members. I am certain that is the case for the other producer organisations. The matter was clarified at a very early stage. There is no doubt that there were some fishermen here under the arrangement in question. When the arrangement became the subject of sharp focus because the fishermen were now employees rather than self-employed, the clarification was sought and given. It was certainly communicated at that point.

The manning agencies still exist. My inquiries tell me that, under Philippines law, that is how one gets out of the country to go work. It is certainly the national policy of the Philippines because it is very involved in the merchant navy as well as the fishing navy. It has a stated national policy of having a percentage of all seafarers across the world coming from the Philippines. That is where the manning agencies allegedly come from. As far as we are concerned, the WRC has made it very clear that the relationship is not tolerated, and that it will not be tolerated.