Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Principally, what we need to do is to encourage people to make complaints to the WRC and the HSA. No matter how many inspectors we have and no matter how robust the regime of inspection we have, it will only ever be possible to inspect a small minority of businesses at a particular level of frequency. As we all know from experience, starting with when the cigire came to school and then inspections in our workplaces, things may look fine when the inspector is there but it may be very different when he or she is not. We need to encourage people to make complaints. This can be done through the free phone line, the WRC website and the HSA. I very much appreciate in saying all of this that many people feel unable to make complaints for fear of intimidation or victimisation. Many of those working in particular sectors often come from migrant backgrounds and may have limited language competencies. This can also make it harder for them. We need to particularly target these sectors for unannounced inspections in particular.

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