Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I join Deputy Rabbitte in condemning the actions of an employer of some sort, who abandoned a group of Latvians on an island off Skerries at the weekend. The status of the employer in question is not quite clear from the reports I have been given, although I have received a name. The people in question were abandoned off Shenick's Island, which is half a mile from the coast of County Dublin. They would have had to stay on the island overnight if it were not for the assistance of the Skerries lifeboat and the marine co-ordination centre. I have received a report outlining the details of what happened in this case, but it will probably be tomorrow before more detailed reports are available to me. A number of parties, including the Garda Síochána, the Health and Safety Authority, the marine inspectorate and the labour inspectorate, have started to investigate the incident over the past day or two. One of the issues being examined is whether the employer in question had a licence to engage in activity of this nature. If he was involved in some formal way in the production for sale of periwinkles, which I presume he was, he was subject to many Acts and may well have been in breach of them. Such matters are being followed up and examined by the various relevant authorities.

I am keeping in close touch with developments in respect of Irish Ferries. The latest position is that the unions met yesterday and it is expected that the court will issue its determination shortly. Both sides restated their positions yesterday but did not engage in negotiations, unfortunately.

Deputy Rabbitte referred specifically to the labour inspectorate. The recently recruited cohort of inspectors will be allocated specifically to areas of employment dominated by migrant workers, such as cleaning, agriculture and services. The Government provided funding at the end of April to meet the cost of an additional ten labour inspectors and a supervisor, to be appointed to work mainly in that area. The interviews have been completed and some inspectors have been employed. When they are all in place, there will be a total of 31 labour inspectors. The Deputy was correct to state that fewer inspections have been conducted this year than last year. The decrease took place when a number of inspectors were taken from other work and asked to examine certain issues relating to Gama Construction. That was the right thing to do at the time.

Although most employers, including those who employ workers from the new EU member states, follow the rules and obey the laws, there are breaches. We have to use the additional inspectors being recruited to work on such cases. I hope that will be enough. Some 8,000 inspections were conducted each year under the old system. Extra work has had to be done on the detailed inspections. The Minister will keep the system under review. I deplore the breaches of the law to which I have referred.

I remind Deputy Rabbitte and certain people outside the House that the Government decided last year to allow people from the new EU member states to work in this country from 1 May 2004. That decision was taken to help the position of the Irish labour market and to deal with the fact that we had full employment, in effect. We were confident that laws were in place to ensure that such people were treated properly. It behoves everybody to obey the laws to which I refer. We have to come down extremely heavily on employers who are in breach of those laws. The Government is in the process of increasing the number of labour inspectors from 20 to 31. I hope that will make an impact. I will give Deputy Rabbitte the full details on this issue as soon as I have them, but it will probably be tomorrow.

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