Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I understand the reason they are not all in place is due to the difficulty in getting people to take up this kind of work. People have been interviewed for the jobs. Dealing with this end of the labour market is not seen as a very attractive profession even though the remuneration is quite good. We must deal with this issue. It is believed that we can tackle it when we have 31 inspectors. We will try to get them in place as soon as possible. I have been checking on the matter both this morning and yesterday since I saw the reports on this particular issue.

In some cases where there is a vacancy in a workplace an individual from Latvia, Lithuania or Poland is taken on. That is not a case of displacing an Irish worker. Where there is blatant displacement by an employer, it should be reported. We can examine those issues. We would take a very dim view of a campaign by some employers to improve their margins by getting rid of Irish workers and replacing them with workers on lower earnings. That is a different issue.

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