Food services sector named as biggest culprit for employment law breaches
The report itself focuses on situations in which non-EU nationals are employed in undeclared work, work outside the conditions of their permits, or work while living in Ireland without documentation. Picture: iStock
Food service jobs accounted for more than half of the employment law irregularities uncovered last year, as Ireland struggles with a lack of workplace inspectors, research shows.
The food service sector accounted for 54% of employment permit law breaches in 2023, the report by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the European Migration Network (EMN) found.
Other sectors responsible for a significant number of breaches that were uncovered include the health and beauty (12%), and wholesale (11%) sectors.
Workers who are employed illegally pose a problem for the State in terms of tax take and regulation, while such employees are also in a precarious position due to their lack of statutory rights.
However, the research is based upon breaches of employment law legislation. The researchers acknowledged that their work is therefore hampered by the overall lack of workplace inspectors in Ireland in general and the consequent lack of hard information on which to draw conclusions.
“There’s a commitment to increase the number of inspectors from 63 to 80,” Emma Quinn, a researcher with the ESRI and one of the paper’s three authors, said.
“Even if you did go to 80, it would be a fairly low number if you think about the number of workers in the State.
Ms Quinn described the subject of irregular employment as “such a hidden issue”.
“One of the frustrating things is that information is hard to come by,” she said.
She noted that the data collated by the ESRI has increased in the last couple of years, as Ireland’s population has expanded rapidly, but added that it “is likely only capturing part of the story”.
“That’s only employers who are in breach, but that figure is entirely dependent on the number of inspectors,” Ms Quinn added.
The report itself focuses on situations in which non-EU nationals are employed in undeclared work, work outside the conditions of their permits, or work while living in Ireland without documentation.
For non-EU nationals, working in an irregular situation in Ireland is a precarious prospect.
In 2023, some 4,727 employment inspection cases were carried out — resulting in 293 detected breaches of employment permit legislation, the report said.
Those cases are led by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in tandem with Revenue, the gardaí, and the Department of Social Protection.
However, with 191,600 employers in Ireland in 2023, the overall inspection rate was just 2.5%.
The researchers noted that the planned addition of 17 inspectors in 2024 “is particularly important” in light of the sharp increase in the number of employment permits issued in recent years”.
However, Ms Quinn said that it is as yet unclear whether or not those hires have actually been made over the past 12 months.
Undocumented or otherwise irregular workers in Ireland have benefitted from some changes in how their situations are administered in recent years, with the new 2024 Employment Permits Act providing some protections for workers on contracts but who do not have a permit.
Workers who do already have permits, meanwhile, now no longer have to wait a year before changing jobs — with that threshold updated to nine months — while there is no need to apply for a new permit in order to do so.
