Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I met representatives of the Migrant Rights Centre and I am aware of the findings of its reports. I am also aware of the allegations by the Polish workers. To the best of my knowledge, only one complaint has been received in the Department from the Polish Embassy. This was in respect of a company in Wexford. The case was successfully prosecuted in the courts and is under appeal.

The Department encourages workers, by whatever means and which quite often might be by way of embassies, to contact the Department or the labour inspectorate to bring abuses of this nature to the attention of the Department. It is only in circumstances where legislation is broken that the Department is in a position to pursue these cases further. There are difficulties to do with the rates of pay which have not been resolved because a related matter is before the courts. The rate has not been updated since 1998 which is a very considerable time.

The Deputy raised the matter of inspections. During last year there were three factors which militated against the number of inspections. A number of the labour inspectors were promoted and moved elsewhere, some were involved in the Irish Presidency and a number were also involved in a very detailed re-examination of the role and functions of the inspectorate which took some man hours. The number of inspectors has been increased from 17 to 21 recently. I anticipate the number of inspections to be carried out this year will be considerably in excess of last year's and probably in excess of the year before.

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