Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

This debate is happening in the context of a punitive intervention by the European Commission, which has declared no confidence in the authorities of this State in the prevention of over-quota fishing. Over the years, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority has not fulfilled its responsibility in carrying out a credible number of inspections and properly pursuing cases of over-quota fishing. As a result, the EU has imposed a collective punishment on all vessel owners who now have to have their catches de-iced and weighed at the quayside under close supervision before being refrozen and transported.

Insofar as there are compliant boat owners, particularly of smaller vessels, they have reason to feel aggrieved but there needs to be honesty in this discussion. The International Transport Workers' Federation, in its dealings with documented and undocumented migrant fishers working on the larger vessels, reports that, where quotas species are being finished, migrant workers are routinely coerced into hiding over-quota catch from the authorities. Forcing vulnerable workers to engage in illegal acts is one of the criteria of forced labour, according to the International Labour Organization.

Migrants are very much part of the fishing communities we are discussing today. We know from replies to parliamentary questions I received yesterday that, on the basis of the partial level of inspections conducted by the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, over the last year, issues of non-compliance affecting migrant workers spanning over 40 vessels were uncovered. There are currently only 227 non-EEA migrants enrolled in the atypical scheme spanning the entire eligible fleet, which is barely above one per vessel.

We saw in the case of two Egyptians who survived a sinking in April that the Departments of Justice and Agriculture, Food and the Marine confirmed in writing that the two fishers were never enrolled in the atypical scheme. Yet the boat owners association felt it was fine to have the non-compliant owner of that sunken vessel represent it on the national airwaves one month later, on the day of the flotilla protest in Cork.

The statutory bodies responsible for ensuring the rights and safe working conditions of these migrants need to step it up, starting with a comprehensive crew census of eligible boats so we can establish, once and for all, who is crewing the boats and what hours they are made to work. It will be interesting when we get proper information on that one. It will also be interesting to find out what they are being paid.

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