David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I warmly welcome the Bill and congratulate Senator Quinn for drafting the Bill and Senator Barrett for his assistance.

Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Lockout. I have no doubt the Minister of State's party, my own party and many people in the State will commemorate that event, and rightly so. It was a period when leaders stepped forward to protect the rights of workers. While it is important for us to commemorate and pay tribute to people who made sacrifices in the past it is our duty as legislators to ensure that we protect workers as far as possible and ensure that exploitation is not possible in the Republic in which we live and which we all want to see. That is why it is important that this Bill be brought through the correct process and adopted.

I listened to what the Minister of State said about the possibility of bringing forward his own Bill. The enactment of legislation involves several stages in this House and the Dáil. We have Committee Stage and Report Stage. I hope the Minister will accept Senator Quinn's Bill, and amend it if he sees unforeseen consequences in the Bill itself. I hope the Bill will get support from all Members of the House.

The lacuna that was identified in the case of Hussein v. the Labour Court & Anor. causes a substantial injustice and creates the possibility of further injustice. In the Hussein case, the High Court ruled that a migrant worker who was exploited by his could not receive ¤92,000 in compensation as the employer had allowed his permit to run out without renewing it, rendering the worker an illegal worker, a phrase I do not like to use. The case highlights a major flaw in the Employment Permits Act 2003. When that Bill was brought forward my party colleagues raised the issue of employers holding the work permits of migrant workers, saying it was open to abuse and exploitation. Unfortunately, that has been the case. The fact that the worker in question, Mr. Younis, whom I welcome, with his family and members of the Migrants Rights Centre, to the Visitors' Gallery, can be denied his compensation on the basis that his employer failed to renew his work employer permit highlights the flaw in the legislation. The Government should act to amend the legislation immediately.

Representatives of migrant workers met the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, and the possibility of using the proposed workplace relations Bill was cited as a way of resolving this issue. Whatever the correct procedure, there must be a strong call from this House that something be done as soon as possible to ensure that situations like this do not occur again and that people are not exploited.

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Younis and representatives of the Migrants' Rights Centre in Leinster House some weeks ago. I offered my full support to him. I support the Bill and I hope the Minister will accept it. Sinn Féin will ensure its speedy passage.

I take this opportunity to highlight the case of migrant domestic workers. At a recent conference in University College Cork which was attended by the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, the issue of migrant domestic workers was raised. The conference, which I attended, was organised by the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights which was established by the Faculty of Law in UCC. It would be hard not to be affected or angered by some of the accounts the conference heard of abuse and exploitation by domestic workers internationally and in Ireland. We heard the testimony of one former worker who gave an account of her experience of exploitation in an Irish household. This involved underpayment of wages, physical and emotional abuse, refusing permission to leave the house, extra time worked on bank holidays not being paid, overworking, wholly inadequate breaks, threats of being reported to the Garda for being undocumented if she complained and withholding documentation.

There is a catalogue of abuse and mistreatment. It is difficult to come forward if one is undocumented or even if one's status is unclear. Conversely, this makes migrant domestic workers far easier to exploit. Exploitation exists when one person has power over another. The courage required to come forward is immense and this highlights the difficulties in protecting such workers. Far too often, when exploitation is hidden from the public view an attitude of out-of-sight, out-of-mind is adopted. That is not good enough.

There are steps the Government can take to protect such migrant workers. An obvious step is the ratification of the International Labour Organisation Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers. The Government should take that action immediately. There is also a need for legislative and enforcement action. In particular, there is a need for legislation to criminalise forced labour. There is no place for forced labour in Ireland. There is no place for exploitation of workers. We have much work to do. We have come a long way in improving workers' rights but we still hear cases such as the one presented today and Mr. Younis's own account of his experience of injustice. We cannot allow these situations to continue. I appeal to the Minister of State to resolve this issue speedily and deal with the anomaly that exists.