Mr. Michael O'Brien:

My reading of Dr. Clíodhna Murphy's conclusions is that the situation has not improved. She did acknowledge what the Senator referred to. This research was not a hatchet job by any stretch of the imagination and a minority of the fishers whom she interviewed had better experiences and better relations with their employers. The picture was mixed, to say the least, but predominantly it was not a good one. I noted the response from the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, concerning the proposed review of the scheme. I hope there will be a decent level of engagement with the ITF on what the outcome of the review will be. We are clear that any scheme perpetuates an exclusive relationship of short-term and renewal contracts between a migrant worker and a single vessel or single employer will be a recipe for abuse and for those fishers to be taken advantage of.

Returning to the comment made by Deputy O'Reilly, this is not just a question of the WRC not proactively informing the Department of Justice of convictions of vessel owners. It is the same situation with the Marine Survey Office, MSO. Therefore, other agencies are also not feeding in information to the Department of Justice and the information on who the repeat offenders are in this area is not being centralised. That is why no vessel owners have been banned from the scheme.