Mr. Michael O'Brien:

The atypical scheme is only available to vessels that are over 15 m in length and certain categories within that. We are talking about 170 to 180 vessels out of the entire fishing fleet of 1,900. The vast majority of those would be smaller vessels, probably family owned and family run. That is not to say that some of those vessels do not employ undocumented migrants. They do, but our focus is on the larger vessels in the fleet. It cannot be said, therefore, that we are arguing that the entire industry is guilty of wrongdoing. However, a high proportion of the eligible vessels in the scheme are. That is the plain fact. To date, 35 fishers have been admitted into the national referral mechanism for human trafficking, including three individuals this year. They are incontrovertible facts. I do not know what more I can say about that as the figures for non-compliance speak for themselves.

With regard to the contract, the standard atypical contract provides for a 39-hour average working week. It is true that the amendment to the scheme specified that the workers must be paid for every hour worked, but the reality we often see for those who are in the atypical scheme and who come to the ITF is that they get the €350 into their bank account, but they work far more hours than that overall and there is an accumulating shortfall of wages due to them.

We can get the data from the fishing monitoring centre of the navy in terms of when the vessel is at sea and piece together and substantiate the case the fishers make to us of underpayment.