Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. In light of his comments, it might make sense for the committee to invite in the Minister for Transport to come before to discuss this issue. It seems that there is a mathematical problem which points to widespread abuse of the scheme. The Minister of State indicated that there are 227 individuals on the scheme currently. I understand that there are 210 boats that are eligible for the scheme. Each boat employs substantially more than one person, which begs the question as to who is crewing these boats. The most obvious answer would be that people are being employed outside the terms of the atypical working scheme, without the relevant protections and in an illegal way.