Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Immigration is a net positive for this country. People who come here from abroad improve our culture and the country is richer for it. The State has a responsibility to those workers to ensure they are treated equally and fairly and to protect their rights as workers and also as individuals. This is not a responsibility the State has upheld very well to date.

With that responsibility to ensure equal treatment in mind, this Bill raises a lot of red flags. It is clear from the contributions of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment at pre-legislative scrutiny stage and elsewhere that the Bill is written first and foremost to benefit employers. Workers' rights are very much a secondary issue in this legislation. Making the employment permits system more flexible to the labour market is not a bad idea in itself but flexibility without parliamentary oversight and where there are limited workers' rights is unacceptable. The employment permits system pits workers against each other and provides different rights and protections dependent on how much the Department values their profession. This is not fair and it leaves workers - the same essential workers we all praised over the past few years - in incredibly vulnerable positions in some workplaces. It limits their ability to put down roots, save money, be promoted and even the ability to change their employment when working conditions are poor.

The response from the Government to these concerns will be the usual thing we hear, namely, that all workers in the State are protected and we all have the same rights and protections regardless of where we come from. That is not the reality, however, and we all know it. We can see evidence of this in the minimum remuneration thresholds under the various employment permits. Those thresholds are €32,000 for a person with a degree on the critical skills list, which is below the living wage, €30,000 for a general employment permit, €27,000 for staff in contact centres and €22,000 for horticulture workers and dairy farm assistants. Even before the most recent spike in inflation, we all knew there was an issue in this country with the very high cost of living. It is difficult to see how the Minister can justify the Department working towards a living wage while simultaneously allowing these thresholds to be in place.

One of the most critical factors in determining a migrant worker's experience in the labour market is his or her experience of the point of entry, which is tied together with immigration status. Employment and immigration status are a constant worry for migrant workers, particularly when they have work permits that tie them to their employer for their first 12 months in this country. Such a status limits their ability to negotiate with an employer for better conditions and terms of employment, with employers holding power over their employees' ability to work and reside here. I am not suggesting for a minute that all employers exert this power; far from it. Most really value their employees but there are some who abuse their power. Even when that power is not abused by the employer and the latter would not even dream of doing so, workers still feel there is a power differential. It is always there and is perceived as a threat.

Tying workers' immigration status and access to the labour market to a single employer is a fundamentally poor idea. The exploitation of workers under such schemes has been well documented and they benefit the employer alone. The Department should be working on phasing those schemes out rather than creating new ones. The Migrants Rights Centre Ireland, MRCI, which has been referred to on numerous occasions in this debate, has recommended that a sector-based permit system be introduced, which would afford workers the ability to switch employers within a particular sector. That ability would give them leverage to negotiate and would force employers to improve pay and conditions to retain staff. This would benefit good employers and allow for flexibility. It makes a lot of sense. Has the Department examined that suggestion from the MRCI? I would like a response on that from the Minister of State. The proposal seems to address the labour shortages in particular sectors on the critical skills list while also removing opportunities for exploitation.

It is my understanding that in the 11 years of the existence of the critical skills list, no occupations have been taken off it. There are many provisions within our laws on employment permits to protect Irish and EEA workers and ensure employers are not always looking abroad for staff. The critical skills list is supposed to have a dual purpose, that is, to identify the skills shortages we need migrant workers to fill and to identify the areas in which domestic workers need to be upskilled to ensure there is some movement on the list. It is clear the latter has not been done. What is the view of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science on this? What is being done to address these skills shortages? It would be useful to have a response from the Minister of State in this regard. If the Government is looking for employment permits to be made flexible and responsive to the needs of the labour market, then our education system must be flexible as well. It is clear, however, it is failing in that regard and I would like to know why that is.

As I said, I have concerns the Department is crafting this legislation primarily from the perspective and interest of employers. The move in the Bill towards the use of regulation as opposed to legislation for changes in the system really is not acceptable. It fundamentally reduces the democratic oversight of the system, which is one that needs more daylight shone on it, not less.

I understand, from the employer's perspective, that the ability of the Department to make quick changes to the skills list would be very attractive. That is not so for the workers, whose employment conditions, and therefore immigration status, could be changed overnight without any warning. We cannot presume it always goes in one direction. It provides far less certainty and security for workers. Some particularly convincing lobbyists or an economic downturn could mean that people's whole lives are uprooted. We must think about the fact that these are individual people. It is their lives and livelihoods that are impacted. The system we have in place operates on the assumption that workers on permits are here temporarily. That is not the case for many in practice. Migrant workers build lives here and they stay. The system has to recognise their contribution to the country and give them a clear avenue to permanent residency and citizenship. People who are recruited on temporary permits need to have the ability to transition into long-term status if they meet the requirements of other permits. Treating migrant workers fairly and equally is not just the right thing to do morally, it is the smart thing to do economically. We need people to come here to work. Ireland needs to be as attractive a destination as possible for workers, because people do not emigrate across the world on a whim. They shop around and survey their options. If Ireland is not providing good working conditions, pay, family reunification and a pathway to permanent residency, then workers will go elsewhere. To continue to treat migrant workers as expendable temporary labour who will plug a gap in the market and then be asked to leave is foolish and morally bankrupt. Very often, skill sets are enhanced by virtue of the fact of being embedded in the local culture. All of that is lost if migrant workers leave.

When discussing employment permits, workers' rights and the dangers of having one's immigration and working entitlements tied to an employer, we have to raise the issue of the appalling conditions in the Irish fishing industry. Despite the clear need for labour in the industry, fishers have not been included on the critical skills permit list. Instead, a bespoke scheme was put in place, the atypical working scheme, which is absolutely rife with exploitation. The Government has been sitting on recommendations to reform the sector since last March, showing very little regard for the incredibly vulnerable workers in the sector. I was particularly struck by an interview in the Irish Independentlast month with Adel Sallam, an undocumented fisherman who lost his job last May when two of his fingers were severed in an accident on board a trawler. He came to Ireland, with over 20 years of experience in the fishing industry in Egypt, to fill a gap in our labour market that the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment will not acknowledge on the critical skills list. The International Transport Workers Federation estimates there are between 250 and 300 undocumented fishers in the State, with at least 200 of them having been documented at one point. The exploitative working conditions at sea, including incredibly long hours, inevitably lead to fatigue and accidents. From 2016 on, the US State Department, the International Transport Workers Federation, the UN special rapporteurs and the Council of Europe have all expressed the view that the atypical working scheme does not have enough safeguards in place to prevent human trafficking and exploitation. Despite some changes to the scheme over the years, conditions have worsened. The new regulations are not enforced and when inspectors are sent on board boats, migrant workers feel unable to talk to them or are prevented from doing so. There is a power and inequality issue here. One worker in the system said it was like a visa into slavery. We have to deal with that comprehensively. The WRC carried out 454 inspections up to June 2021 on fishing boats, and found that 323 instances breached conventions. These reports have been consistent. They have come from workers, journalists, unions, international bodies and human rights organisations. To date, the State has refused to take them seriously. The review of that scheme has been completed. It needs to be released as soon as possible, and the working conditions of vulnerable people in this sector need to be regularised.

I wish to finish by saying that I think the pre-legislative scrutiny, as part of the legislative process, is really beneficial when it is done right. It saves us from having to really interrogate the various angles and interest groups later on in the process. The problem is that when it is not done correctly or when some of the issues are not taken on board, it is very difficult to make changes later on. If we are going to have that scrutiny as part of our legislative process, we have to set aside the time to do it and take on board the issues at that point. It is very difficult to get them in later on. I like pre-legislative scrutiny as a process and I have been through it with some committees. In some cases, it is very good and in some cases it is not. It is a mixed bag. We have to take the scrutiny process seriously and really pay attention on Committee Stage, which will enable us to have most of the work done by Report Stage. I support that approach. It takes the same length of time to deal with legislation anyway because if we are going to spend a lot more time on Report Stage or Committee Stage, it defeats the purpose of having a really good pre-legislative stage. That can really benefit that.

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