Mr. Ken Fleming:

We have considered all sorts of things. There is no willingness on behalf of any Department to go down that road. It is a difficult issue. I am a trade union official for 30 years. I am not working with my own tools, which I did for years, as I am doing this job now for about 13 years. We have a set of circumstances where the Government agencies, NERA and all of those guys, are being asked to go in and police something that is quite complex. The man on my right is one of my inspectors who has been over here helping me. It took me two years to train him. My team is a team of seven. It is a hands-on job because of the trickery in the maritime area generally in terms of a flags of convenience and plates on walls. We can get around all that because we have inspection rights. We offered to be part of the construct of the scheme and we were ignored. We were brought in and shown a piece of paper and we were told to leave. When they told us to leave every bit of expertise in the country had just walked out of the room.

I offered to provide finance to train members of An Garda Síochána at the highest level. I spoke with Derek Byrne, the assistant commissioner. I suggested he pick seven or eight gardaí and take them out of their locations because if one has a garda in Castletownbere or even Finglas, he is dependent on me to give him the nod when something is going on around the corner that is a bit untoward so that we can start detecting the crime. If I happen to be a boat owner who has a black fellow on the boat and I am not paying him. The Garda has not got involved and is not going to get involved in that. If we are going to have a raid somewhere we need to train up people from different jurisdictions and bring them in, but the one thing we have to do is find a way to stop the boat owners from knowing we are coming. I say that on record. A raid took place in October and I rang the Garda on the Friday and said they need not bother going because the boat owner knew they were coming. I told them the boats that would be there waiting for them. This was a senior garda. He asked me how I knew. I said one of the boat owners had just told me. He asked me who told him. I said it was one of "your lads".

It is community based. It is a community disease. It is inherent in everything. I always preface my remarks by saying I am a practising Catholic. It is right from the Catholic Church all the way down to the Spar shop with the Western Union machine in it. A Deputy owns one of the shops and I asked him one day in RTE whether there were any foreign workers in his port and he said "No". I asked what he was doing with the Western Union machine in the front of his shop. What Irish person sends people money through Western Union? The whole system is in denial. Unless we can get the Garda and the MSO to commit resources, no matter what we do to the permit scheme, what colour it is or how well designed it is, if there is not independent inspection and consequences this will go on and on.

If members saw those people when they are homeless or when they come to Liberty Hall and accept clothes for nothing, or if they saw me in RTE going next door to buy toilet rolls - in the name of Jesus - and the boat owners say I am a fantasist. They cannot get me today because of House privilege but when they get me, if they ever get me, it will be off to the High Court with me because they are suing everyone else. I would rather they put their money into paying wages than paying legal teams.