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A HUGE NUMBER of Irish fishing vessels are in breach of a scheme set up to protect foreign staff working on their ships.
In 2015, an investigation by the Guardian found that workers from Africa and Asia were routinely being employed illegally on Irish fishing trawlers and were being exploited as a source of cheap labour.
It found that the issues were mainly concentrated on vessels more than 15m in length that were catching whitefish.
Following the newspaper report, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) set up a system to provide permits to fishing workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
The aim was to provide workers with clear contracts backed by minimum pay levels and other mandatory terms and conditions.
Breaches
However, new figures from the WRC show that a massive chunk of Irish fishing vessels are in breach of the new system.
There are 2,000 vessels in the Irish sea-fishing fleet. Of those, there are 176 registered whitefish and shellfish vessels over 15m in length.
Since February 2016 the WRC has inspected 150 of those 176 vessels.
Almost 200 contraventions of the new permit scheme were detected across 110 vessels, meaning that about three-quarters of those inspected were in breach of the scheme.
Of the violations identified by the WRC, about a third related to a failure to produce or to keep records.
A fifth of the breaches related to leave, public holiday and Sunday entitlements. There were 28 cases where inspectors found illegal non-EEA workers on board who did not have valid permission to work.
There were violations in several other areas, such as not providing payslips.
Enforcement
The WRC said that it looks for the issues to be rectified and any unpaid wages to be paid. It said that vessel owners that fail to engage with it will be prosecuted.
It said that, so far, it has initiated five prosecutions “where compliance by other means was not secured”.
WRC director general Oonagh Buckley said that many vessel owners “engage with inspectors and respond satisfactorily”.
“But if they don’t, the WRC will move to deal with contraventions through compliance and fixed payment notices or prosecutions,” she said.
As previously examined by Fora, the new permit scheme has been criticised by union officials who helped uncover the original abuse in the fishing sector, who claim that many illegal workers on Irish fishing vessels are still undetected.
Written by Paul O’Donoghue and posted on Fora.ie
What abut their own website? Can’t see any cookies notification there either…
As far as I can see they only use 2 session cookies both of which are non-intrusive and expire at the end of the session. So they don’t need to display any alert.
Have they cookies?
They do! Every website needs to display this message, weather they have one or more cookies.
No, Jeroen, they don’t. See paragraph 5 of regulation 5 of SI 336 of 2011.
Thejournal.ie is on that list. say it ain’t so guys.
Never fear. The Data Protection Commissioner says: “The 80 websites in question were chosen at random as a representative sample of sites. Receipt of a letter does not indicate that a site has not achieved compliance with the law”.
Phew.
A word document? Really?
Well the Journal wrote an article about the Instagram storm in a teacup and yet has ignored this cookie privacy directive that has been around since mid-year. The article seems to be indicate that non-compliance is a bit of a laugh. The site also uses Google Analytics and there’s no specific reference to this in the Privacy Policy (there’s supposed to be a standard term as part of the agreement to use Google Analytics)
Perhaps the author of this article might like to ask the Journal management for a statement as to why they did not implement the requirements in July. Especially as it was well flagged.
Never got a cookie on Journl.ie
Brian – Just for the sake of clarification, our Cookies Policy (which is linked at the bottom of each page on the desktop and mobile sites) lists the full range of cookies used by the site or its various components.
Google Analytics is at the top of this list. http://www.thejournal.ie/cookies-policy/
Thank you for point ing this out. I was looking at the Privacy Policy. I don’t think I’ve seen a cookie policy as detailed as your own.
So with this level of transparency, why avoid the regulations?
I am assuming the journal will be replying in the affirmative to this letter. Cookies leave a bad taste in my mouth :(
How ironic that all these sites ask us for permission to accept cookies – and then they don’t use said cookies to remember our choice last time around… Oh the ironing
I have been implementing quit a lot of these scripts and the funny thing is that some offer a tickbox so you won’t be bothered again, with the result that….. a cookie is placed on your computer :-)
Yeah, it really shows the grasp some folk have on technology doesn’t it. Such a pointless law….
The Cookie Monster must of been working over time setting these rules,
lol a third of the sites are owned by the state…. Have to laugh at that!
What’s with the chocolate chip cookies in the picture!! Was the reporter on his 10 minute break, or is this story ironical!!
Unfortunately unlike the UK, there hasn’t been much guidance from the Data Protection Commissioner. A search on their website for cookie guidelines brings back nothing of interest
Om nom nom!
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