Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

The State's failure to prevent the exploitation of migrant workers is clear from the numerous incidents of abuse that have come to public attention in the past year. I will remind the House of a few of them. Ms Oksana Karamjana, a Latvian crew member on the Irish Ferries ship the MV Normandy, told "Prime Time" that her three-month contract involved working seven days a week for 12 hours per day with no holidays or days off. Kilnaleck Mushrooms in County Cavan dismissed 14 female mushroom pickers in recent weeks after they complained about a change in their work procedures which involved working between 80 and 100 hours per week for an average of €250, about a third of the national minimum wage, and without any pay slips or contracts of employment. Everyone will remember the Gama workers and everything associated with that incident, which was and remains a scandal. Domestic workers who work alone in private homes are even more open to exploitation because they have little access to trade unions or information about their rights.

Few of the all too frequent abuses of workers rights receive media or public attention. The most common complaints about employers' treatment of migrant workers involve the denial of work contracts, statutory break times, wages, days in lieu for working bank holidays and the refusal to award the correct minimum wage entitlement. Employers often fail to renew work permits while they tell their employees that they are in the process of renewing them. Many migrant workers are paid less than their Irish counterparts.

The State has facilitated many of these abuses by failing to take action on them, by refusing to provide a properly resourced labour inspectorate and by failing to ratify the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. In 2004 the labour inspectorate carried out a mere 462 inspections under the National Minimum Wage Act 2000. That is a disgrace.

Our motion is straightforward, positive and constructive. It seeks to improve the enforcement of workers' rights and entitlements. It seeks substantially to increase penalties for non-compliance with employment rights legislation. This would mean a large increase in the labour inspectorate to at least 75 inspectors and the provision of proper legal and other professional support for the inspectors. All these issues should fall under the remit of a separate and stand-alone department of labour affairs. Work permits should be granted to employees rather than employers. All workers deserve protection of their rights. Sinn Féin's proposal would move this State in the right direction. I urge the House to support the motion.

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