The head of Ireland’s fishermen’s representative body has told SeafoodSource that media allegations of undocumented foreign workers working in Irish fishing, which proved unsubstantiated, have harmed the fishing industry in his country.
A native of the key northern fishing port of Killybegs in County Donegal, Francis O’Donnell is adamant that his organization will not tolerate any members with undocumented workers on their vessels.
“There is a very real campaign now being waged against the Irish fishing industry by the mainstream media in Ireland,” O’Donnell , the CEO of the Irish Fish Producers Organisation, claimed recently in his column in the Marine Times monthly newspaper, suggesting that the campaign was “full of inaccurate observations that are factually incorrect and lacking in any detailed research.”
“I feel that some of the agencies are highlighting the issues in an attempt to rebrand themselves or to create more awareness about their own organizations,” O’Donnell said. He was speaking to SeafoodSource about the fallout from a 2015 investigation by the UK’s Guardian newspaper claiming exploitation of undocumented foreign workers on Ireland’s fishing fleet.
“The Guardian [in 2015] claimed that there were 5,000 to 7,000 people working illegally in fishing in Ireland,” O’Donnell said. “I said that the maximum I could be was 1,000, but that it was more likely around 500. There are 11,000 workers in the entire industry...The media now says it’s 1,500 undocumented workers, but I think that is an over estimate. However, 1,000 or 1,500 workers is very hard to prove, but no one can disprove it either.”
Irish fishermen are suing the Guardian over the report.
“It’s widely known that fishing companies named in The Guardian report are going after The Guardian for defamation, their solicitors have said so publicly,” O’Donell said. “The case collapsed because the court accepted the vessel owner and skipper weren’t deliberately making slaves out of the workers but rather picked them up through an agency in the U.K.”
Under a work permit system introduced in the wake of The Guardian allegations, Ireland’s Department of Justice and Equality provides work permission for fishermen who come from outside the European Economic Area (EEA). The program commenced in February 2016 and for the first three months, applications were confined to non-EEA crew members who were already working in the Irish fishing industry. That date was extended to the end of June 2016 to encourage enrollment.
O’Donnell stressed to SeafoodSource that the IFPO has since 2008 been writing to government seeking a permit scheme, “to give protection to both workers and to fishing companies.”
Howver, O’Donnell’s organization has problems with the new work permit system.
“I wrote to the Department of Justice saying that I believe the current permit system not working. Why? Because the permit is not transferrable,” O’Donnell said. “If a worker comes from Morocco or Papua New Guinea and they fall out with a skipper their permit has to be transferrable so they can support themselves and go work on another vessel.”
O’Donnell said he didn’t get any response to his letter. But under newly announced revisions to the permit system, a worker can apply to go to another vessel “but it can take three months for this to happen. This is not acceptable.”
According to O’Donnell, only 173 permits have been issued in the past year. The industry has had to adapt from long-held practices to the new procedures, he added.
“Traditionally, trawler owners paid workers a share of the catch, but under the new scheme workers become official workers like any other, paying taxes and social security.”
However, he stressed, the perception that workers are being exploited is unfair.
“Some members are paying the minimum wage plus a catch bonus,” he said.
Claims of widespread exploitation in the Irish fishing industry have not been substantiated by investigations, O’Donnell said – even after the Gardai [police] and Workplace Relations Commission [Irish state agency tasked with enforcing employee rights] conducted what O’Donnell described as “very heavy handed” early morning raids on fishing vessels.
“While there were some technical problems discovered, there was no widespread problem over labor discovered [during those raids]. These were very aggressive searches involving firearms. If they use that level of force and there’s been no major discovery of irregularities, I have to ask why there’s been no charges if the proof of the widespread abuse exists. Some agencies like the International Transport Federation… if they have information about people working on vessels, they are obliged to give it to the police and to the WRC,” he said.
According to O’Donnell, 80 percent of Irish fishing vessels have no foreign workers. Yet there are 2,500 vessels in Ireland and only 350 of them are in producer organizations. There are 250 vessels of 18 meters and more in length that are not represented by anyone, O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell said he didn’t think that reputational damage had been done to the Irish fishing industry or its exports as a result of the Guardian investigation.
“No. There’s been a similar issue in the U.K., but they are in fact jealous of us that we have put a permit system in place,” he said.
