Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Has the Tánaiste been briefed on the report by the labour inspectorate into the international Turkish-based construction company, GAMA? The Tánaiste went to Turkey and invited Turkish big business to come to Ireland. Was she aware then, or since, that GAMA, which came at her invitation, combines the most advanced technology with the most primitive techniques of worker exploitation, perfected in many states in the Middle East, and then imported intact into Ireland four and a half years ago? GAMA swore to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, of which the Tánaiste was then in charge, and to the trade unions that it paid the agreed rates to all its Turkish workers — a minimum of €12.96 per hour and overtime. However, with consummate cynicism, GAMA paid Irish workers those rates, but not the Turkish workers. GAMA never gave its Turkish workers legal payslips. I have GAMA payslips. One such pay-slip for a worker named Jamal was typical. It shows that in one month last summer he worked 330 hours, which is a monstrous 80 hours plus per week. Leaving aside overtime, on the flat rate, he should have received a minimum of €4,200 a month but he got less than €1,000. This is a bank statement from his account in the Is Bank in Turkey showing that he received less than €250 in cash to spend in Ireland for the month. The rest, less than €1,000, was paid into a Turkish lira and euro account in Turkey. Where did that worker's €3,000 monthly income go?

When the investigation began, the Turkish workers were coached, under severe duress, to say the money went to accounts in their names in Finansbank in Holland. They had to be coached because no worker knows, or knew, that they had accounts in their names in Finansbank in Holland. What we have, in fact, is a master fraud by a major entity in the construction scene in this country; a grand larceny of workers' wages amounting to millions of euro each month. Tens of millions of euro have been stolen from the workers over the past year alone. GAMA paid not a penny in income tax on behalf of the workers because the company is exempt by agreement with the Tánaiste and the Revenue Commissioners from paying income tax. Apart from the slave wage rates, that agreement gives the company a hugely competitive edge over other construction companies that pay trade union rates. This is the most severe corporate criminality.

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