Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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3. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the steps that he is taking to identify and address illegal and unsafe excessive working hours in the fishing industry. [26928/22]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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A Memorandum of Understanding on the monitoring and enforcement of the Atypical Worker Permission Scheme for non-EEA fishers employed on certain Irish-registered fishing vessels was signed by 11 Departments and Agencies in May 2016. The MoU provides, among other matters, for further coordination, cooperation and information exchange between the parties.

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) is one of a number of agencies which contributes to the enforcement of this scheme and has particular responsibility for checking compliance insofar as terms of employment, permission to work, payment of wages, annual leave, public holiday and National Minimum Wage entitlements are concerned.

The WRC objective is to work with employers, in this case vessel owners, to achieve compliance. Fishing vessel owners who do not comply on a voluntary basis, following the issue of a Contravention Notice, will, depending on the legislation involved, be issued with a Compliance Notice or Fixed Payment Notice or face prosecution.

However, I must emphasise, that enforcement of compliance with rest periods and maximum working hours requirements in the fishing sector is the responsibility of authorised officers of the Department of Transport, i.e., Marine Surveyors.

The WRC for its part, in accordance with an agreement reached with the Department of Transport in April 2019, informs that Department’s Marine Survey Office of any contraventions or potential contraventions of fisheries working time legislation.