Ireland has established a new work permit program that allows the nation’s fishing companies to apply for permits to hire workers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
However, only four Irish fishing companies have applied to participate in the program, which sets a minimum annual wage of EUR 34,000 (USD 35,300) and a minimum standard of working conditions under each permit.
Ireland’s Department of Enterprise, the government ministry which administers the scheme, has set a quota of 150 permits for the fishing sector but told SeafoodSource it has only received four applications, “of which two have been issued, one has been refused, and one is awaiting a decision.”
Michael O'Brien, regional officer of U.K. trade union Unite the Union, told SeafoodSource that instituting the new system was necessary, as the gap in time from scrapping the old permit scheme to the introduction of the new system led to fishing companies hiring staff illegally.
“Two Indonesian nationals working on Irish fishing vessels illegally were referred in October [2024] to the Irish police’s Human Trafficking Investigation and Coordination Unit (HTICU) for protection,” O’Brien said.
Therefore, O’Brien described the new plan as a “significant improvement” on the scheme it replaced and essential to avoiding such instances.
Irish Fish Producers Organization (IFPO) CEO Aodh O’Donnell, however, said that intense bureaucracy was the main culprit for the low application rate.
“The issue is the scheme’s permit application process is administratively complex and requires a long lead time,” he said. “The employment permit application must be submitted with proof of a Labor Market Needs Test showing EEA workers were sought. This requires copies of two recruitment ads which must have run for 28 days prior to submission of the application.”
Exacerbating the issue, workers can not move companies easily under the new scheme, according to O’Donnell.
“When an employment permit is granted, the employee is restricted to only working for the employer stated on the permit. To change employers, they must wait until nine months after their first permit was granted to apply for another permit,” he said. “Given the state of Irish fishing, these limitations and wait times reduce the appeal of the permit. Even if a vessel is busy, bonuses or overtime cannot be included toward meeting the employee’s minimum salary.”
Additionally, he said that the new scheme does not operate harmoniously with the traditional permit scheme Ireland offers.
“Furthermore, the permit scheme cannot be remunerated in line with the traditional share scheme operated by many vessels in the fleet,” O’Donnell said. “This creates added difficulty, as a vessel could have a crew doing the same job but on very different payment agreements. Ultimately, the permit’s confines demonstrate a lack of understanding of how the Irish fishing industry operates today.”
O’Brien pushed back on some of O’Donnell’s gripes, saying that other industries have jumped through similar hoops with few issues.
“The market needs test and all the other obstacles [the IFPO] points out apply to all the jobs filled by the work permit system. That is several hundred thousand jobs across many sectors,” he said. “They have not proved insurmountable to employers in other sectors.”
Ireland was listed as a second-tier country in the U.S.’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report, a watchlist compiled by the U.S. State Department that tracks human trafficking worldwide. The report specifically called out Ireland’s fishing industry for leaving undocumented workers in Ireland’s fishing industry vulnerable to human trafficking.
More recently, an Irish fishing company remains under investigation by several state agencies, including the country’s Marine Survey Office and the Workplace Relations Commission, over the employment terms of a group of Ghanaian fishery workers who were rescued from a trawler when it sank off the west coast of Ireland in early 2024.
