Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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10. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will honour the agreement made by his Department to an organisation (details supplied) and introduce amending legislation in order that fishers can submit complaints under SI 709/2003 and its successor, SI 672/2019, relating to excessive working hours and insufficient breaks and rest periods, to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51490/22]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The purpose of this question is to ask why the Government has not done what it has promised on several different occasions, namely, to provide a remedy for migrant fishers, or any fishers, who are overworked. They are working long hours in contravention of the EU directive. Currently, they cannot go to the WRC. The Government has promised on multiple occasions that it will introduce amending legislation to enable the fishers to do so, but it keeps failing to do it. It is the migrant workers who are losing out. I will give examples later.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The WRC, under the aegis of my Department, is one of several agencies that monitor the operation of the atypical worker permission scheme for non-EEA fishers employed on certain Irish-registered fishing vessels. I presume this is the scheme the Deputy is mainly referring to. The WRC has particular responsibility for checking compliance insofar as terms of employment, permission to work, payment of wages, annual leave, public holidays, and National Minimum Wage Act 2000 entitlements are concerned.

Hours of work and rest periods of fishers who work under a contract of employment or in an employment relationship on board Irish-registered fishing vessels are governed by the European Union (International Labour Organisation Work in Fishing Convention) (Working Hours) Regulations 2019 (SI No 672 of 2019), which are monitored by the Department of Transport. Marine surveyors of the Department of Transport are authorised officers for the purposes of the enforcement of these regulations and may, where a contravention of the regulations is detected, issue directions to the owner or master of a vessel or detain a vessel. Proceedings concerning offences under these regulations may be brought by the Minister for Transport. WRC inspectors currently do not have a statutory function in relation to SI 672/2019.

Following mediation in April 2019 on the atypical scheme, however, a settlement agreement provided that the Department of Justice would recommend that WRC adjudicators have jurisdiction over violations of the fishing vessel working time hours of rest regulations and that this would be implemented by the appropriate measures to be determined by my Department. In this regard, our Department has engaged with the Department of Transport and agreed a proposal to extend the WRC's jurisdiction relating to excessive working hours and insufficient breaks and rest periods. This proposal will be progressed as soon as is practicable in new legislation as part of a package we are working on. Hopefully, I will be able to provide a further update to the Deputy on this matter soon. I hope this deals with the specific question tabled. I think the Deputy wants to go further than this as well, which I am happy to do if there is time.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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I thank the Minister of State. I do wish to focus on this issue. The consequence of the Government failing to act on the agreement with the International Transport Workers Federation is that workers like Jose Pame Salandron are not able to vindicate their rights in the WRC. This is a guy who was working 80 or 90 hours a week regularly. He went to the WRC and he was awarded, wrongly, €14,000 under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. The case then went to the Labour Court and it was stated that this context was not covered. This is accurate. His award was then cut down to €4,000. Mr. Salandron may now be taking a case against the State, which could cost it money under the Francovich damages' principle, which he is seeking, because of the State's failure to transpose the directive. The Minister of State indicated that this is going to be done as soon as is practicable. In answering a parliamentary question from Deputy Barry in January, however, he said, "This proposal will be included as a miscellaneous amendment in a legislative instrument in the Spring". When is this going to be? I presume it was the Spring of 2022 that was referred to and not the Spring of 2023. The Government is leaving migrant workers extremely vulnerable to continued massive exploitation and to working 80 to 90 hours a week. When is this measure going to be progressed?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I cannot comment on the specific case raised, but I am happy to engage with the Deputy separately on this aspect in general. We are bringing forward this package. I do not have a timeline for it now. I will, though, try to get it fast-tracked. We were waiting for the recommendations and the changes and the review of the atypical worker permission scheme. The Deputy will agree that it is positive that this scheme will now be changed and replaced by access to the work permits scheme. A cross-departmental working group is examining this endeavour and these changes will be brought forward in the next couple of months as well. Overall, then, new legislation will be required. It is not prepared or ready yet, but I will try to respond to the Deputy with a timeline as fast as we possibly can. Several Departments are involved in this process and the associated complications. The commitment was that the WRC would be involved in this and we will follow through on this as quickly as we possibly can.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The settlement agreement was reached on 30 April 2019. The reply to the parliamentary question was given in January of this year. Do the Minister of State and the Government not feel bad that this failure to act has left extremely vulnerable workers ripe for extreme exploitation? They are being left with no remedy in respect of going to the WRC to deal with being asked to work an illegal number of hours. The Government continues to fail to transpose the working time at sea directive by not giving workers access to a remedy here. People like Jose Pame Salandron are being asked to work 80 or 90 hours a week.

Unfortunately, he is not alone. I urge the Government to stop taking its time with this matter. It is urgent. The Government should act immediately.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I join the Deputy in urging the Government to take action on this as quickly as possible. It is not all vessels and it is not all employers. Where it happens, however, it is awful.

We have people working 17 hours a day in unconscionably awful conditions. They are extremely vulnerable. These are migrant workers. It is already tough for workers who work on land and who might have access to some resources to vindicate their rights at work. It is nearly next to impossible for workers at sea - people who are extremely vulnerable - to vindicate their rights. Collectively, we should be trying to alleviate that to the greatest extent possible.

I pay tribute to the International Transport Workers Federation for the work it does. However, that organisation has to feel that the Government is working against it instead of working with it. The Government should be working with the federation, particularly as we all have a responsibility to protect these workers.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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This is an area of priority. Most stakeholders with whom I engage in this sector across the different Departments wanted the review of the atypical working scheme prioritised as soon as possible. To be honest with the Deputies, that is where a lot of our work has gone in. That review is to be completed. The recommendations and the report went to Cabinet a few weeks ago, and we can get on with that work to replace the atypical working scheme with the work permit scheme. That will be beneficial to everybody. Most Members of the House will agree that was the right area to concentrate our work on.

Since the launch of the atypical working scheme in February 2016, the WRC has been involved in closely monitoring it. In particular, during the period from when the scheme was launched to 31 October this year, it carried out 530 inspections. It detected 392 contraventions and completed 251 investigations and 21 prosecutions. The WRC has also made 45 referrals to the Department of Transport in respect of potential contraventions of the hours of rest and working time regulations enforced by that Department. There has been ongoing monitoring. This is to do with the next part that the Deputy is concerned with as well.

A number of information awareness measures have been introduced by the WRC since 2016 to enhance employment rights awareness and compliance in the fishing industry. In order to enhance these measures, the WRC consulted last December with 16 relevant stakeholders who were requested to make written submissions in relation to, among other matters, possible additional outreach measures for fishing vessel owners and migrant fishers. Submissions were received subsequently from five of the 16 stakeholders. The WRC 2022 report on the outcomes of these consultations sets out a range of actions, including some 23 measures and initiatives currently being progressed. Such measures include: information provision; awareness and promotion; and direct engagement with officials, vessel owners and representative organisations, taking in training and use of communication and social media channels.

There is much change afoot in the sector, and rightly so. Those need to be driven across Departments as well. We are willing to play our part and have been doing so.