Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I want to address the issue of the seasonal employment permits in the first instance because I find them to comprise the most troubling aspect of this legislation. I want to put some questions to the representatives of IBEC. By way of context, I want to refer to answers that were sent to us by the Department in response to questions I asked last week.

Regarding initiatives undertaken in respect of the meat processing sector, the Department stated that the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, had been active in the sector for a number of years carrying out inspections. I will not read all of the replies, but the important figure is the 46% of inspections that detected breaches of employment law to some extent, for example, adequate records, working time, pay issues and employment permit issues. The WRC recovered almost €184,000 in outstanding wages. It is shocking that we are not just discussing bringing more workers into that environment but also shortening the time they are in Ireland. As ICTU pointed out in its submission, this greatly hinders workers' ability to vindicate their legal rights because it is not possible for people to get organised or become familiar with their legal entitlements if they are only in Ireland for a couple of months. We see from this information that, in some instances, we cannot trust employers in this regard. As we found out, 46% of employers were not adhering to the requirements. In light of this, do the representatives from IBEC believe it is fair to bring workers into that environment? Clearly, the issues in question have not been addressed.