Mr. Liam Kelly:

Returning to a point that I perhaps should have covered earlier, on the Oireachtas joint committee report, there are four issues and Senator Gavan has raised one of them. As part of our standard functions, we report all suspected trafficking cases in the fishers’ sector to the Garda as these people are very vulnerable and perhaps exploited.

On the most recent campaign, the so-called Palace campaign with the fishers, of all of the fishers that we spoke to we came across three who were undocumented. They are out there and all of our inspectors are fully trained in looking for signs of trafficking to be reported to the appropriate authorities because they are the most vulnerable people who we come across as part of our functions.

As for what are the types of signs we look for, one is the abuse of someone’s vulnerability on the part of the employer. Are the employees restricted in terms of their movements? Are they subject to violence or intimidation as part of their work? Are their travel documents retained for any periods? Are they involved in debt bondage? These are just some of the things we look for when we talk to workers on the ground; these are questions we may look out or ask of them. If we do find anything we refer to the appropriate authorities, as this is very serious. This is in addition to our work with the European Labour Authority in identifying where channels of trafficking come from in particular sectors.