Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 51: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if the Government plans to ratify the 1990 UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families in view of the fact that there is a need for greater protection of the interests of migrant workers and their families here which is not catered for by Irish law. [23478/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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As I and other Ministers have indicated in response to similar questions in the past, Ireland is not a party to the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1990. Nor has Ireland ratified this Convention.

Other Member States of the European Union have not signed or ratified this Convention either. In fact, up until last year only 27 countries worldwide had actually ratified it.

This Convention is a complex cross-cutting one, which has been examined by several Government Departments. I understand that before Ireland could consider ratifying it there would need to be significant changes across a wide range of existing legislation, including employment, social welfare, education, taxation and electoral law. Many of the issues addressed by the Convention would have a European Union dimension and this would also complicate any proposed ratification by Ireland of it, if our European partners were to continue to refrain from ratification, as they seem likely to do.

In this context there are no plans to ratify this Convention. However, that is not to say that I am not committed to many of the ideals and aspirations which the Convention tried to further. In particular, I am fully committed to the prevention of exploitation of migrant workers and to ensuring that all workers benefit from the full range of our employment rights protections.

In this respect I would point out that this range of protections has been added to by the Employment Permits Bill 2005, which was passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas on 14th June 2006. It provides a number of new important protections for migrant workers including: the granting of the employment permit to the employee, rather than the employer, the employment permit containing a statement of the rights and entitlements of the migrant worker, including that the employee may change employment through the application for another permit by a new employer.

I would also emphasise that the current proposals for a new Social Partnership agreement contain a new employment rights compliance package for all workers, which includes new legislation as well as the establishment of a new Office for Employment Rights Compliance.