Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Michael Ahern. It is good that we are debating this issue. However, the reason for this debate is a source of shame to this country. That a company in the third millennium would treat workers in this fashion is disgraceful. The company has handled this matter very poorly. It has deliberately rejected factual information put to it by the media. In the High Court it has suppressed factual information gathered by the inspectorate at the Department, thereby adding insult to injury.

Since coming to this country five years ago the company has worked on four major sites, including the Ballincollig bypass, the Ballymun regeneration project and the Ennis bypass. I was a member of Cork County Council when contracts were signed for the Ballincollig bypass. Councillor John Mulvihill, a former Member of the Lower House, asked questions about the treatment of workers and the remuneration they received. He also pointed out that this company had submitted a bid that was €15 million lower than the nearest competitor. Even a cursory glance reveals this to be a huge amount of money, particularly in contract work, and particularly when most bids are within €3 million or €4 million of each other. Now we know the reason it could do this job at this price. It also bid for the contract for the Ennis bypass. This time its bid was €5 million lower than the nearest competitor.

These projects are vital for sustaining progress and encouraging infrastructural development. However, when contracts are signed by local authorities involving the National Roads Authority and funds from the EU there is now an onus on the State to ensure there is a clause that examines the rights of workers and employers' obligations regarding contract law, workers' rights and legislation affecting workers. This would be a proactive approach and would prevent situations from getting out of hand. This is no guarantee that workers will not be abused, that shortcuts will not be taken, or that such commitments will be honoured but the inspectorate could deal with that if the situation were to arise. At least there would be a structure in place to deal with this.

Let us consider the 2003 accounts for Gama Construction Ireland Limited. It employed an average of about 1,000 people. Staff costs and wages were in excess of €28 million. The average wage for workers was €26,000. The figure is extraordinarily low when one considers the industry-wide minimum wage is €12.60 per hour. Given the length of the working week one would not have to be a mathematician to know something is seriously wrong. It took the courage and foresight of Deputy Joe Higgins to reveal this scandal. Without him, we would not be discussing this. When it was discovered this money was kept in accounts in Holland it was, to all intents and purposes, money-laundering. This money was robbed from workers who did not have a command of the language and who worked from early morning to late in the evening. Years ago Irish workers abroad were the first to crow about these kind of conditions. Irish workers have never lost the mindset ingrained from years of working abroad.

Documents in English were signed by workers. One presumes this was the way signatures were obtained so that money could be held in Dutch accounts. It was hypocritical and wrong for a representative of the company to appear on national television and rebut the information put to him and to claim workers knew this was happening. It was a lie. The company changed its position as events unfolded, which makes the matter worse. In some cases Turkish workers were being paid €2.20 per hour, far below the minimum wage. We know about signs that went up on building sites and in shop doors in the UK to the effect that no Irish need apply for positions, yet this debacle happened in Ireland.

Shortly after Senator O'Rourke launched a book in Trinity College she raised the issue of female migrant workers. One woman who came to the country late in the evening got up early the next day and found a list of jobs to do. She had to complete tasks such as washing the dog and cutting the neighbour's grass. The woman had no time to settle in this country and probably did not have breakfast that morning. That list of tasks was drawn up by someone who knows better, someone who has benefited from the Celtic tiger and was in a position to hire staff. This is how that person abused workers' rights.

It is particularly sad when one considers that many of these workers leave behind young spouses and families. They came to this country to make money. The difference in remuneration is clear. They came to work in a country where they knew nobody. They were open to exploitation and were abused left, right and centre. In many cases, they came here just to improve the basic standard of living for their loved ones back home. There was no great financial reward for them. They were not buying yachts or holiday homes, they were simply trying to create a better standard of living for their loved ones.

The very fact that no payslips were issued to these workers tells its own story. It is a disgrace and is a violation of Irish law. It was clearly designed to fool workers by using a paper trail to cover up where the money was. We all know now that it was in a bank in Holland.

I know many steel fixers who are carrying out contract work in the Cork area. The levels of payment are well known. However, a 24-year-old steel fixer from Ankara claims he is owed €33,000 by Turkish standards. That fact tells its own story because if it is €33,000 by Turkish standards, one can be guaranteed it is a lot more by Irish standards. Other trained, skilled members of the workforce are being paid well below the grade that members of that profession would earn in this country.

It is not good enough for Gama to go to the High Court because it adds injury to insult. It is despicable that the company has gone to the High Court in an attempt to suppress the inspector's report. I appeal to the Minister of State to fight, through every possible avenue, the legal attempts by Gama to block this information from coming into the public domain. We need to examine this information and we owe it to the workers who were abused by Gama to ensure it is released.

When this matter was first revealed in early March, the statement issued by the company took some beating. Gama at first denied there had been any underpayments, while knowing full well that the money must have been in Holland all the time because they are the people who had put it there. The company then released a statement saying that an administrative error was responsible for an underpayment of 8%. That is despicable and the person who defended that position has no credibility. They blamed an administrative error for an 8% underpayment but do they think the Department inspectorate's officials are fools, or that the politician who revealed this scandal was at a loss to understand the English language?

Since 2002, the money has been transferred to these Dutch bank accounts. I will repeat the figures involved. The workers claim they were being paid €2.27 per hour, as against an industry standard minimum wage of €12.60. The difference equates to about €4,000 which is exactly the amount of money that was being lodged every three months in a bank account in Holland. It is clear, therefore, that the money was being deliberately deducted from the employees without their knowledge and being lodged in that account.

An article by Michael Clifford in The Sunday Tribune stated that one of the employee's accounts in the Dutch bank listed his address as Netterville Manor, Meath, Dowth, Ireland. The address in question is an old Irish house offering up-market bed and breakfast facilities. It is fair to say that there is not necessarily any link between the people who run this bed and breakfast establishment and the advertisement itself. It is a world away from the Second World War billeted accommodation that those people were used to. A website listed a telephone number for this particular employee, which was the number of Gama Ireland's headquarters in Dún Laoghaire. That is disgraceful. It is clear that they concocted this information to make it look as if it was a genuine operation.

I was driving along Molesworth Street yesterday and I came across the protest by the affected workers. I wound down my car window and was able to listen to the case being made by Deputy Joe Higgins. A good number of Turkish workers were outside the gates of Leinster House bringing their protest to the national Parliament.

It was a scandal that this case was allowed to happen but at least action is now being taken. It illustrates the extent to which people were prepared to go in order to break the law and abuse workers rights — one of the fundamental principles of social justice and equality for which my party was established over 80 years ago. It is a scandal that this has been allowed to continue in the third millennium. I appeal to the Minister of State to fight at every available opportunity the legal efforts being made by Gama. We owe it to the workers to publish the inspector's report.