Widespread abuse and exploitation of Asian and African migrant fishermen continues to plague the Irish fishing industry, according to evidence presented to the jobs committee of the Irish senate on Tuesday.

The committee is investigating a permit scheme introduced by the Irish government in response to a Guardian exposé of working conditions on its trawlers in 2015.

The scheme was meant to regularise the status and give employment rights to the large numbers of undocumented workers on whom the industry depends for labour. The International Transport Federation’s coordinator Ken Fleming told the committee however that the permits had not had the intended effect but had instead “legalised slavery” and were no better than “dog licences”.



“I’ve seen dogs treated better than what I’ve witnessed [among migrant fishermen] in the last two years,” Fleming said. The union told parliamentarians it had found widespread illegality on boats including non-payment of wages, poor uptake of permits, and cases of workers being trafficked. It is preparing to lodge legal claims against the Irish state for failure to tackle the problem.

The senator Ged Nash, who was jobs minister when the government set up an urgent taskforce to address the abuses identified by the Guardian investigation, told the committee that he was aware of “really egregious problems” in the Irish fishing industry. He described meeting 42 Egyptian migrant fishermen in his Drogheda constituency last year of whom only two had managed to obtain the new permits and said he had heard of “wilful abuse”. He condemned the enforcement agencies for failing to protect workers from illegal conditions, which he believed were putting the reputation of the whole industry at risk.

The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland also gave evidence to the committee. Its director Edel McGinley said the centre was seeing “gross forms of exploitation” and called for an immediate review of the permit scheme. A survey by MRCI involving 30 in-depth interviews with non-EEA migrant fishermen in recent months found a third reporting routine verbal or physical abuse; 44% reporting personal injuries during work including serious cuts and crushed limbs; almost half saying they did not feel safe because of exhaustion from very long hours and prolonged lack of sleep, and two-thirds saying they regularly had to carry out unpaid work.