A report published by the ESRI this week seeks to shed light on what is effectively an illegal economy based on what the report describes as “irregular employment.” It is entitled Non-EU nationals in irregular employment in Ireland and was written by three Irish based researchers who are part of the European Migration Network whose Irish contact point is the ESRI.
If I may get my conclusion in first, it might be described as yet another insight into what is effectively a hidden economy based on illegal immigration. Similar to the trope about how we need to bring in construction workers from overseas to build houses for other immigrants, the question must be asked as to which economy and which group of employers is the beneficiary of all of this. The report does not really address this.
The scale of what is happening is unknown as the report’s authors admit. “Reliable data on the extent of irregular employment of non-EU nationals are generally not available, in Ireland or internationally,” they write.
Exactly how unreliable is indicated by the fact that what evidence there is seems to be based on a relatively small number of workplace inspections, of which there were 4,727 in 2023. That represents just 2.5% of registered businesses and according to the report the vast majority of inspections are carried out on foot of a complaint or a well-founded suspicion. In any event the Workplace Relations Commission only employs 80 inspectors.
There were 293 breaches of the various Employment Permits Acts discovered in the course of inspections in 2023. The corresponding figure for 2022 was 166. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is empowered to revoke a work permit in such a case. However, the total number of revocations for the period between 2017 and September 2023 was just 277.
That suggests that as with other sanctions related to illegal immigration, including the low rate of deportation orders executed, that the odds against facing actual punishment are good. They would seem to represent little of a deterrent, especially when one considers that in the same period there were almost 145,000 work permits issued for non-EU/EEA employees.
It is unlikely that the small number of breaches and revocations represent anything like the full scale of abuses and exploitation. That is obviously a guesstimate on my part but Gript has reported on several instances where it would seem – and this is the view of experts in the area who I have consulted – that something akin to labour trafficking may be involved in abuses of the asylum accommodation system.
While the impression is often given that the “regularisation” scheme announced in 2020 for illegal immigrants was due to the fact that they were virtually all in employment, the statistics suggest otherwise. The report refers to data compiled by the Migrant Rights Centre (MRCI, one of the NGOs it ought to be recalled who lobbied for the scheme) which claimed – and this is all self-reported – that “Of applicants to the regularisation scheme aged 18-64, 55 per cent were in employment and 11 per cent were self-employed.”
Which means, unless my arithmetic is awry, that 34% of illegal immigrants were not working. So, how were they supporting themselves? Can you claim social welfare if you are not even supposed to be in the state? How do you get a PPS number if so? Or if you are not working or claiming social welfare, what are you doing to survive?
The same of course applies to those claiming to have been in work or even having their own business. How do you manage tax and other matters? One thing is for certain is that if the Irish state suspects that you as an employee or an employer are working or employing somebody without being compliant with the regulations on social welfare and taxation then you will not be offered the opportunity to “regularise” your situation.
Yet the Irish state, as announced with great fanfare by outgoing Minister for Justice Helen McEntee in December 2021, was prepared to take pretty much a stab in the dark and introduce an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Although the Department had accepted an MRCI estimate of up to 17,000, less than half that number, 8,311, were included in the applications made before the scheme closed.
We have no idea whether this represents all of those in such a situation and it is unlikely that persons who are still effectively under the control of traffickers or who are engaged in covert criminal activity as have come to notice when persons are discovered to be involved in prostitution, drugs and fraud are going to present voluntarily.
The ESRI report states that the vast majority of cases of breaches of employment law detected have been in “food services,” “hair and beauty” and “wholesale.” That ought to be contextualised by the report’s reference that “labour exploitation was the second most identified purpose of human trafficking in Ireland between 2015 and 2020, behind human trafficking for sexual exploitation.”
A suggestion of a much darker and hidden world behind and partly parallel to what they themselves recognise as the opaque dimension of labour exploitation. It is an indication that this state is host to a network of migrancy related criminality of which the state clearly knows very little.
While the report is concerned solely with the situation of non-EU and EEA nationals and is able to provide some data on their countries of origin there is none on the country of origin of the employers who are involved. Yet, it is surely apparent that the vast majority of them must be themselves from overseas and in most cases from the same countries as those who they have working for them?
I of course do not know this for certain. And if those with access to what sparse intelligence there is on “irregular employment” do, then they are not letting anyone else know. And of course they must know if they know where the persons employed were working and who owns the places they were employed in.
Then again, perhaps the facts might militate against a narrative in which there is no such thing as a “bold immigrant.” Even if that migrant might be involved in labour trafficking and exploitation. If abuses there be, and there clearly are, then better for that narrative that they all appear to be on the part of the hosts.
No doubt there are some Irish employers who benefit from employing illegal migrants, just as there are Irish people who will engage in what is basically the rape of sex slaves. That must be addressed and subject to severe sanctions. Fundamental to that is to cut off the supply.