Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I will finish shortly. They have no protection in terms of health and safety. They suffer injury in many cases. For many of these fishers, it comes to an end when they suffer a significant injury and are no longer able to continue. They are then off the boat and the owner of the boat no longer cares about them. It is an absolute scandal which continues in this country. The International Transport Workers' Federation has done excellent work in highlighting and campaigning on this issue but we need action by the Government. We know there are 211 boats eligible for the atypical working scheme but only 227 live permits. That begs the question of who is crewing these boats and suggests there are large numbers of undocumented workers. We need a census to take place now. We need protection of workers across the industry, proper transposition of the EU directive on working time within fisheries and observation of that to make sure workers' rights in the sector are being protected.

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