Feargal Quinn (Independent)

That is a reminder that people will undertake work far beneath their capability. One of our tasks is somehow to find a way to change that situation. I know the Minister's heart is in the right place, but I am not sure how we achieve that aim. We have seen people's ability to lift themselves up from where they were before within a short period. On a recent visit to America, I met a man born in 1936, I think he said. He described the experience of arriving there from Germany with his family in 1949, when he was aged 13. There were three or four in his family. Within four weeks, that family had bought a home, and within six weeks they had a car. He told me that was so far removed from the way of life he could have expected back in post-war Germany. When people come to our society and achieve something similar, it is a joy to see, and we need to encourage that.

Immigrants can often be ready to start at the bottom and work their way up. Within limits, that is perfectly acceptable. Those limits are the nub of the problem. Our law rightly imposes on employers very strict constraints on the terms by which they may employ people. For instance, the law lays down that they must pay at least the minimum wage. No individual employer and no individual employee has the right to enter into any contract that nullifies that agreement. A raft of conditions apply to working conditions and health and safety matters. Some people will argue that we have too much regulation in that regard, but that is not a point for this debate.

The point is that the law is the law. No one has the right to consider himself or herself outside or above and beyond the law. As we recently discovered with the issue of taking money from the residents of nursing homes, not even the Government — the State itself — has the right to break the law. I believe immigrants are entitled to be treated exactly the same as everybody else. Part of the difficulty in making that a reality arises from the circumstances in which immigrants often find themselves. If they are illegal immigrants, they are immediately open to becoming the prey of unscrupulous people. Even immigrants who are here perfectly legally often find themselves at a disadvantage.

One difficulty that has been much encountered recently is caused by the fact that people do not necessarily speak our language or the English language. That cuts them off from many of the safety nets that would normally come into play. I know the Government and unions have taken some steps in that regards. In one of our supermarket outlets, we now do our training in three different languages. We need to do that to train people and have them understand what is required.