Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 8, between lines 27 and 28, to insert the following:

"(e) the flag under which the vessel is registered;".

These amendments relate to each element of the Bill on the flag state. As the Minister will be aware, on Committee Stage I tried to move amendments relating to the flag and, in particular, to try to get rid of flags of convenience. The essence of my amendments, which the Ceann Comhairle ruled out at this Stage, was basically to make flags of convenience illegal in so far as it affected our trade or ships going off our register.

As the Minister will be aware, it has been a long discussion. I launched that Bill, which, I think, is still on the Clár and was on the Clár of the previous Dáil. Obviously, it relates to the long years of suffering by maritime workers, those who carry out 99% of our trade, of bad wages and bad conditions.

During the previous debates on this issue, I particularly commended the work of the late Mr. Tony Ayton of SIPTU and the International Federation of Transport Workers. Mr. Ayton spent a large part of his life trying to invigilate vessels coming into our waters and carrying out our trade in the major ports, such as Cork, Dublin and Waterford, and generally trying to improve the lot of maritime workers.

We had a major debate on all of these matters, which the Minister, Deputy Dempsey, dealt with in his previous Ministry in 2005 when Irish Ferries moved to sack 543 workers and outsource the work to workers from Eastern Europe on massively degraded pay and working conditions. Anybody who uses the ferries regularly, as I do, will find that there have been significant changes in working conditions in the major ferries connecting Ireland with Britain.

There was also the long saga of the notorious MV Normandy where they were working for four months in total on a ship and then being forced to take three weeks' unpaid leave. There were also serious allegations brought before this House about the MV Defender, which is berthed in Irish waters and whose crews, allegedly, were owed thousands of euro in unpaid wages.

I note that Mr. Ayton's successor, Mr. Ken Fleming, of the international transport federation and SIPTU, has continued to campaign vigorously on this matter. In this Parliament, I want to support strongly his efforts. As he told the Irish Examiner a couple of years ago, he found mass exploitation, effectively slave labour, of foreign national seafarers coming to our shores carrying out the vast bulk of our exports and imports, and he felt that major action needed to be taken against it.

The Bill deals mainly with carriage rules, construction rules, etc. However, I felt it would be important, given that it is a major merchant shipping Bill, to try to include some prescription on flags in it. Ireland is a maritime state and we should begin to take a leading role on this issue. Even where we are bringing into force the international conventions such as SOLAS and the maritime convention, we should begin to set a few headlines and move towards ending the days where states such as Mongolia, the Bahamas, Cambodia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines - perhaps 30 countries - are where so much of world trade is allegedly, unofficially or illegally based, and where the end result is desperate suffering for maritime workers. That was the reason I introduced the Mercantile Marine (Avoidance of Flags of Convenience) Bill in 2005 on behalf of the Labour Party to try to tackle these flags of convenience.

Although I accept the Minister will probably state that is the reason we cannot put this type of prohibition into the Bill, I ask that at least we would provide for a requirement that the flag of the vessel be an element of the Minister's considered powers in all the matters before us in the Merchant Shipping Bill - in other words, that the flag would be an important issue and that perhaps later on, if the Minister attends the maritime convention which will follow from this Bill being passed in this House, he might state that Ireland is one of those countries, perhaps the first, to take a strong role in the matter of the misbehaviour and ill-treatment of workers by the misuse of flags, and particularly these notorious flags of convenience.

I strongly urge the Minister to accept all of these amendments, first and foremost, in the memory of the great Tony Ayton and his campaign to make Ireland a headline country in the matter of the abuse of workers on the seas which is happening right this minute to tens of thousands of workers, especially from Asia and Eastern Europe, and that we take a step today. I urge the Minister to accept amendment No. 4 and all the other amendments to this effect throughout this Bill.

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