Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

Select Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 32 - Business, Enterprise and Innovation (Revised)

Photo of Paul MurphyPaul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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I want to follow up on a particular group of workers that the Minister was asked about by Deputy O'Reilly last week, namely, content moderators for Facebook. They released a powerful open letter today and I would encourage the Minister to read it. It gives a picture of this invisible army of workers who are doing essential work, which allows social media and the Internet to function but who are significantly undervalued. We are talking about over 1,000 workers in Ireland. For Facebook, essentially all of them are outsourced so that they do not work directly for it. The letter outlines the ways in which, in general, they are not treated properly, not offered hazard pay, not offered real healthcare and psychiatric care and quite poorly paid. They have been particularly put at risk in terms of Covid-19 and how they have been treated. I know the Minister said to Deputy O'Reilly that he would be happy to meet those workers and their representatives, or both. Is that something that can happen relatively quickly? There is a particular group called Foxglove, which has co-ordinated the open letter. This group is in Britain and it is working specifically on that issue. Does the Minister have any response on those issues in general and can he confirm that he is happy to meet them?