Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am last to speak but I hope not least. I remind Deputy Michael Healy-Rae that not too long ago, the Government mantra, like that of other Governments before it, was to work towards a four-day week on the logic that we would be much happier and healthier and more effective and productive. However, the mantra changes depending on the market.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, even though I am the final Deputy to do so. I pay tribute to the Department and the library and research service for their work on it. I will try to be as quick as I can and hope colleagues stay awake, but there is a lot to refer to on this subject. I know what the Bill intends to do and, on one level, it is very positive. Its provisions have been clearly set out by the Department in its briefing note and by the library and research service. As noted by other speakers, the purpose of the Bill is to consolidate the existing legislation and make it more focused. It also seeks to introduce a seasonal employment permit, which I will come back to with reference to the committee that looked into this; provide additional conditions for the granting of an employment permit, which I welcome; facilitate third-party subcontractors, which I am a little unsure about; provide for automatic indexation of salary thresholds, which is quite basic; and improve efficiency and provide flexibility. All of this is very welcome.

However, we must also consider these provisions in the context of what we are trying to do in this area, particularly in the context of the belated publication today by the Department of Justice of the report on an atypical working scheme for non-EEA fishers in the Irish fleet, which I have in front of me. The issue dealt with in that report is not covered by this legislation, which raises the question as to why that is so, given the report was completed in March and we are now in October. The report has been published today and we are trying frantically to read and understand it. It is very much related to what we are talking about in the debate on this Bill.

The background to the Bill includes the pre-legislative scrutiny work done by the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I am sure the Minister of State has read the committee's report because he takes these things very seriously. The Chairman of the joint committee, Deputy Quinlivan, says in the foreword to the report: "The pre-legislative scrutiny of the General Scheme of the Employment Permits Bill has probably been the most challenging one undertaken by the Joint Committee to date." I am sure it was challenging on lots of levels but particularly on a human level in terms of considering the situation of migrant and seasonal workers. We all in Ireland come from a background in which our natural feeling is to empathise with people. I go to Achill every year. In the past, there was a constant flow of people from there to Scotland, made up of seasonal workers who did just about everything. That has left a huge mark on the island and on people there. It is the same in Connemara, which people left to work in different areas. I would never like to see a repetition of what the people from Achill and Connemara endured in England and Scotland, although I pay tribute to those places for taking a lot of our people when we did not look after them. The Minister of State knows the point I am making about the very difficult conditions for seasonal workers. We know that very well. There is a double obligation on us, one of which is a moral obligation and the other an obligation on a human level, to bring in legislation that protects workers.

That is what we are trying to do in this Bill but we must consider the concerns that have been expressed. I educate myself by reading the Bill digest, the briefing information and then, depending on time, I try to read the pre-legislative scrutiny that takes place in committee. Like most Deputies, I am always under pressure. In this instance, the committee has raised ten serious concerns and made eight recommendations. Those concerns and recommendations jump off the pages of the report and the Minister of State has taken two or three of them on board. He has gone with the joint committee in getting rid of the special circumstances employment permit. I welcome that, although I think he may come back at it in another way. Let us see. He went with the recommendation on conditionality, which is very good. He is also going to make the system more flexible by removing many of the proposals for making operational changes by way of regulations. That is to be welcomed in one way but it means there will be much less scrutiny and oversight of the system and much more power for the Minister. I will come back to that point presently in reference to the absence of oversight of the atypical scheme the Government is now recommending be stopped. Oversight is very important.

In this Bill, we are amending and overhauling three items of legislation. In fact, we are getting rid of two, if that is the right way to put it. I am losing my legal terminology as I spend more time here. The 2014 Act was brought in to put certain rights on a statutory basis. Now we are deciding that approach was too rigid and we are going down a less official route. I have serious concerns about that because I am not sure what analysis has been done to highlight the inadequacies of the 2014 legislation, which was introduced to copper-fasten rights on a statutory basis.

As I said, the joint committee made eight recommendations and outlined ten key concerns in respect of this Bill. In the Bill digest, the authors do not make a judgment but ask the question of the Department as to whether it has taken on those recommendations and concerns. The Minister of State is of the opinion he has taken them on but he does not really seem to have done so. I hope this will all be teased out on Committee Stage. I have only read the joint committee's report once, which was the best I could do, but we must take on board its serious concerns. It is an all-party committee and no member said he or she is against the report or offered any alternative or amendment to it.

There is a balance to be struck in these matters. We need workers but there is a balancing of rights in that and a balance to be found in ensuring our own people are trained, upskilled and provided with opportunities. Reading all of the documentation, what jumps out at me is the slowness to remove some of the skills from the critical skills list, which should be happening because we, as a nation, have upskilled our people to fill those vacancies. That does not seem to be happening. I welcome diversity. It is good for any country to have diversity but it is also good for us to look at how we are first upskilling our own people here in Ireland to ensure we do not continue to see an absence of critical skills.

I have fallen into the trap with the Minister of State, for which I take the blame, of asking whether home care workers could be put on the critical skills list. On reflection, he was right to say "No". We used to have the problem of getting somebody assessed as being in need of home care hours or packages. That was the big battle for us. Now people are assessed very quickly, or relatively quickly, but there are no care workers to provide the hours. We have allowed a situation to develop in which we simply do not have care workers. I could list the day centres in Galway that do not have staff to provide disability services. There is also the problem that goes along with that of using rented buildings instead of using capital funding to build facilities. Day centres and respite services are not open and home care packages are not being implemented because there are no staff. What do we do? We Deputies come in here and ask that these role be put on the critical skills list in order that the staff can be recruited from somewhere else, but that is not the answer. The answer is to upskill and train people in this country and provide good working conditions for them. That is what should be done within our country and it certainly and equally is what should be done for workers we want to bring here.

Representatives of migrants have expressed concern about the continued tying of the employee to the employer. When I looked into this, I was told that in certain situations, workers can move from their employer and certainly can do so when there is abuse, misuse or a failure to have the employment contract enforced.

What vulnerable employee is going to move? That should not be there. The idea of giving permits to a sector, rather than an employer and an employee should definitely be looked at.

Of course, all of this is premised on the review from 2018, which set out seven basic principles. It is worth reading out some of those principles, where the vulnerability of the sector is identified. It is set out in the 2018 report and repeated in different documents. The Review of Economic Migration Policy sets out the seven guiding principles, including the preference for having workers from the EEA area, and so on. It goes through them. I am not picking and choosing, because they are all very important in setting out the principles. However, under principle 6, on employment rights, the review states:

Migrant workers are often a more vulnerable class of people, particularly in the lower skilled end of the labour market. Language difficulties, cultural differences, and lack of social networks can disadvantage migrants and increase the potential for abuse by unscrupulous employers. Ireland has a very thorough employment rights legal framework. Careful consideration is given to the potential for abuse and many of the criteria in evaluating employment permit applications focus on the bona-fides of the employer and the protection of the permit holder.

Migrant workers are identified, within the seven principles, as a very vulnerable group of people.

A report was also published today, which I have tried to read as quickly as I can. It is inexplicable that it should be published today when Second Stage of the Bill has already commenced in the Dáil. No explanation has been provided for why the Report of Review of Atypical Working Scheme for Non-EEA Crew in the Irish Fishing Fleet is dated March 2022. First, the recommendation is that this group of people come under the permit system. I am not sure why that was not done. Can it be done on Committee Stage? The report published today seems to say that it will take a year. It seems daft to be going through the Employment Permits Bill 2022 and not include this group of people. Looking at the executive summary of the report of the review group, it makes two recommendations. It states:

The Review Group was in full agreement in relation to its conclusions and recommendations. The key recommendation of the group is that the employment of non-EEA crew in the Irish Fishing Fleet be provided for under DETE’s Employment Permit scheme instead of the Atypical Working Scheme.

However, it goes on to state that it will take some time for this to be implemented, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine will lead on the work. I make a strong appeal for it to be included in the Bill as it progresses through the Dáil. The second main recommendation of the review group is that "any AWS Fisher with a current immigration permission, and who wishes to do so, have their existing immigration permission extended for a period of time, to be agreed by the relevant Departments, to allow them to remain in the State to apply for an employment permit under the DETE’s employment permit scheme and receive a decision on that application." Those are two strong recommendations in respect of people who find themselves in that position.

This report deserves to be praised because it is making a positive recommendation. However, we cannot do this in isolation. We have to look at how this was ever allowed to happen in our country, with our history. The atypical working scheme, AWS, for non-EEA crew in the Irish fishing fleet was established in 2015 because a previous review found that we needed to do something quickly because of how badly workers in this sector were being treated. The AWS was brought in and a monitoring group was set up, but it was given no terms of reference. I do not know how we can have trust in the system. I want to be positive about this Bill, but when I look at the report published today, I see the gaps. The oversight committee was established and a memorandum of understanding was agreed in February 2016. However, the oversight committee met on an informal basis. By 2019, a mediated agreement was required. Imagine an oversight group being set up to monitor the AWS for the group of vulnerable people that we are saying should no longer be in the scheme but should have permits, and the oversight group needing a mediation settlement to tell it what to do in relation to monitoring the system that was brought in following the task force report in 2015. Here we are now in 2022, and no cover is provided for at all within this Bill. There is no learning either. It seems daft to me. "Daft" is not even the word for it. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine was in charge of it and a mediated agreement was concluded.

When I looked at that, I asked myself what led to an atypical scheme, and a scheme that was not monitored, being brought in. On pages 31 and 32 of the report, it is stated that:

Since the introduction of the Atypical Worker Permission Scheme in 2016, the WRC has:

- Carried out 7 enforcement operations

- Participated in a Garda-led operation

- Carried out almost 500 inspections of the 170 vessels in the Scheme

- Completed 228 investigations

- Detected 365 contraventions of employment legislation

- Brought 20 prosecutions against fishing vessel owners.

According to the report, the WRC found that 42% of vessels inspected had been compliant without WRC intervention. However, 54% only became compliant after WRC intervention, and 2% of vessels remain non-compliant. The report also sets out the contraventions that were found between 2019 and 2021, some of which I believe Deputy Barry read out earlier. I will not have time to go through them all, but the report lists all of the contraventions. They include 29 contraventions of working without permission, 24 contraventions of national minimum wage not being paid, 18 contraventions in respect of annual leave and 21 contraventions of not complying with an inspector's direction. They are detailed on page 32 of the report.

We can see the importance of the matter. It is one thing to bring in good legislation that is grounded in human rights, but we are not even managing that. Hopefully, when it goes through Committee Stage that is what will happen. It is another thing to monitor it. I will finish by saying that when I read this report, I was aghast. The report highlights that there is no evidence of human trafficking and no prosecutions have been made. The review group seems to think that is good. The Minister of State will remember the debate we had on the Criminal Justice (Smuggling of Persons) Act 2021. In that legislation we swapped around the burden of proof, so hard was it to bring a prosecution in human trafficking. At least that is what the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, told us. The burden of proof was reversed so that humanitarian organisations on the ground now have to prove that they are not trafficking human beings. They have to prove their innocence. In the report of the review of the AWS, the review group takes great comfort from the fact that there were no prosecutions, as opposed to analysing how it happened that there were no prosecutions for human trafficking, particularly when the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons, TIPS, reports, a report by Maynooth University and reports from the International Transport Workers Federation all tell us that there are serious concerns in relation to human trafficking. Over time, the US TIPS reports have repeatedly criticised the AWS. We were downgraded and put on a tier 2 watchlist, although the Government has argued against this. The 2021 TIPS report stated that Ireland did not "meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking", but it said that we are "making significant efforts to do so". The 2022 TIPS report also outlines the failure of the State in relation to human trafficking. It stated that one alleged trafficker's case was thrown out, "in part due to the government's failure to inform the four victims of their opportunity to testify". It went on to note that "In 2021, government officials raised concerns the workplace relations commission (WRC) did not sufficiently understand its role in identifying trafficking victims or have adequate trafficking training, and the separation between immigration, labor, and trafficking enforcement was unclear to all officials." It is worrying. These concerns are set out and highlighted in the US State Department's TIPS reports year after year. I became familiar with those reports in relation to the Criminal Justice (Smuggling of Persons) Bill 2021 which became law a year ago.

While I give a cautious welcome to this Bill, I must ask why the Government has not dealt with the concerns of the cross-party committee, why the report was not published and why provision was not made for employees under the atypical scheme.

See this speech in context