Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 27 April 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Protection of Young Persons (Employment) (Exclusion of Workers in the Fishing and Shipping Sectors) Regulations 2021

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I agree the majority that we are aware of are Irish. Again, I do not have the numbers in the sector but I can discuss it with the lead Minister. It generally reflects family situations and people working for families but it is still important that we have a very clear directive. People might want to bring forward cases to us and this will strengthen the national law to deal with them. I will raise it with the Minister to see whether there is data on the numbers. We do not think they are large. It is generally family situations.

Deputy Stanton mentioned the atypical scheme and a number of Departments are involved in it. As the Deputy did, I picked up the frustration among some in the sector who run a very tight ship and follow the letter of the law and look after everybody. In any sector there will always be some who try to abuse the law or regulations. As I said in reply to Deputy O'Reilly earlier, this is a very strong area for investigation and follow up, and every boat in the situation is investigated and checked quite regularly. We reckon the figure gets close to 100% quite regularly and, naturally, any information we receive is dealt with as well. The scheme has been put in place because we understand and to make sure the Departments of Justice, Agriculture, Food and the Marine and ourselves try to police this. In the majority of cases, employers are responsible and work within the law with regard to their staff. We have to keep monitoring this, of course, because there will always be cases, and this is why the protections through the various agencies are there.

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