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

This Bill is for the exploitation of migrant workers. That is what it is. It is a Bill, therefore, to undermine the rights of all workers. It is a Bill written in the interests of the employers in particular sectors. Evidence of that is contained in the fact that the minimal recommendations made by the Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, of which I am a part, which were signed up to by even the Fine Gael members of the committee, have been ignored. Minimal attempts to strengthen basic workers' rights have been ignored yet again by this right-wing Government.

Some of those recommendations included the proposal that workers on general employment permits would have the same rights as workers on critical skills permits and would be allowed the right to gain access to the labour market after two years instead of five years. The recommendations would allow them better rights to family reunion and would allow family members the right to work. The committee also recommended against introducing the proposed new seasonal employment permit. It is obviously intended as a carte blanchefor employers in industries such as hospitality and fruit-picking to treat migrant workers like so much disposable cutlery; tools to be discarded without a second thought at the end of the season.

It is not only People Before Profit that is saying the Minister has ignored workers' rights in this Bill. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions agrees. It says the legislation addresses the needs of employers only, not workers, and has no proposals to enhance workers' rights. Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, which represents many migrant workers in this country, also agrees. It says that the committee's recommendations have been entirely ignored, "leaving workers at risk of severe exploitation". The centre stated that this Bill, as it currently stands, is focused solely on increasing flexibility for employers with absolutely no attempt to protect workers' rights. That is the scandal. The centre is absolutely correct. The Bill is about flexibility for employers and has absolutely nothing to defend the rights of migrant workers and all workers in this country.

Particularly cynical is the Department's ongoing refusal to provide anything near the level of resources required for the Workplace Relations Commission to actually enforce workers' rights.

More than 30,000 work permits have been issued so far this year, yet the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, only has approximately 50 inspectors across its entire remit, which is much broader than just dealing with these permits and the rights connected with them. That is a joke on the same level as the three regulators allocated to oversee Anglo Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland combined before the financial crash, or the current risible underresourcing of the Data Protection Commission. They are all systems of State regulation designed to fail so that big business can do whatever it likes and who cares about the consequences for workers or society as a whole. Will the Minister of State at least have the decency to acknowledge that workers’ rights have been disregarded in the drafting of this Bill and that he, his Department and this Government have entirely caved to the demands of employers and employers’ lobbyists on this?

I note several returns in the Register of Lobbying relating to the employment permit system from former Fine Gael Deputy turned lobbyist, Mr. Tom Neville. It seems he has been energetically lobbying his former colleagues in Fine Gael on this, including the Minister of State and another Fine Gael Minister, Deputy McEntee, on behalf of a recruitment agency for non-EEA workers, Workforce Ireland. This latest version of the Bill before us includes provisions enabling recruitment agencies to in effect become sponsors of permits, rather than the actual employer. This reinforces another parasitic layer of exploitation and control of vulnerable workers. Mr. Neville's demands and requests in respect of the Bill cannot be seen in the lobbying register, but perhaps the Minister of State can fill us in on what he and his officials spoke with Tom Neville about on between two and five separate occasions between September and December last year when the general scheme of this Bill was being drafted. Is there any correspondence between the Bill’s favourable provisions for recruitment agencies and the lobbying the Minister of State's former Fine Gael colleague, Tom Neville, on behalf of one such agency? According to the lobbying register, Mr. Neville registered his lobbying firm, Neville International, in September 2020 - it clearly has international ambitions - just seven months after losing his seat in the February 2020 general election. That is a lot less than the one year cooling-off period for relevant designated public officials-----

See this speech in context