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

Is it not an embarrassment to the State that the ITF's fisheries representative in Ireland has to go to his colleagues in Spain, which has ratified ILO 188, and the flag state, Germany, to work on having questions of unpaid wages and illicit double contracts acted upon? One cannot help but draw the conclusion that there is a greater premium being placed on fish stocks in our territorial waters than the rights and welfare of human beings.

Let us be clear, this is an incursion of slave-wage conditions onto the shores of the State. Even generously assuming that the Indonesian crew of the Ortega Tresworks, say, a 40-hour week, that would make their hourly rate €4.40, only one third of the statutory minimum wage. By comparison, future non-Europeans recruited to work on Irish-flagged vessels will have to be on a minimum rate of almost €15 an hour before they get their stamp 4 and graduate to share the catch. We hear a lot about the Common Fisheries Policy, but it is clear we are some way off from a common floor of decent pay and conditions within Europe when it comes to pay and conditions for migrant crew.

If any of the dozens of charges of fisheries and maritime offences against the skippers of those two Spanish-owned German-flagged vessels is upheld in the courts, it follows that the Indonesian crew were coerced into illegal acts by their employer. Coercion into law-breaking activity is an internationally-recognised indicator of forced labour and human trafficking. While such an eventuality will be taken up with the German and Spanish authorities by the ITF, the fact that such practices can happen in Irish waters and, from the point of view of the crew, go unchallenged by the Irish authorities is deplorable. It underlines why the ratification of ILO 188 needs to be put on the agenda of the Oireachtas forthwith.

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