Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I am sure the Taoiseach will join me in deploring the circumstances in which 13 Latvian workers were abandoned on a small island off the coast of Skerries. This is part of a pattern. It is the latest, but most extreme example of the casual regular everyday exploitation of immigrant workers, in particular poorly paid workers.

The case history is well established. In the case of Gama, it was due to official policy — sponsored invitation from the Minister of the day to that company. The Taoiseach has made his views known in the House on the case of Irish Ferries, where Irish workers were displaced by cheap labour, but I am not sure he has managed to do anything about it. There is a dispute ongoing in Doyle Concrete, in Rathangan, in the constituency of my colleague, Deputy Wall, where workers have been disemployed to allow for the employment of cheap labour. We have had some horrific cases of abuse of migrant workers in domestic service, who are excluded from the terms of the Employment Equality Act. Domestic service was not a phenomenon at the time it was enacted.

One of the latest cases I know of from the rights commissioner is that two workers employed for only three weeks were found to have been cheated out of €7,000. It is unclear whether the money will be paid to the people in question on foot of the rights commissioner's findings. In another case, a person who worked on a mushroom farm for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, was paid half the minimum wage rate. Such cases are part of a pattern.

The number of inspections carried out by the labour inspectorate decreased from 8,373 in 2002 to 5,160 last year. Four new inspectors have been appointed to the labour inspectorate, bringing the total number of inspectors from sixteen and a half to twenty and a half. There is less than one inspector for every 100,000 workers. There is less than one per county. Every county has a dog warden, but not every county has a labour inspector. The number of labour inspectors is inadequate to force compliance with employment legislation and to tackle the phenomenon I have mentioned.

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