Wage irregularities have been discovered on more than a quarter of all ships inspected by the Irish inspector of the ITF, the International Transport Federation, over the past year or so, it has emerged.
At the start of a week of action, ITF co-ordinator for Britain and Ireland Norrie McVicar in Dublin yesterday said that of 82 inspections carried out, wage irregularities were found on 21 vessels. He said that about $700,000 (€540,000) had been recovered for seafarers.
As part of the international week of action, Mr McVicar said French trade unions had signalled that they would be carrying out "strong protests" at vessels operated by some Irish companies using ports there. The companies affected would be Irish Ferries and Celtic Link.
He added that the French unions had not specified the nature of the actions they intended to take, he said.
A spokesman for Irish Ferries said it had no specific information about any action planned by French unions. Its Normandy is due in Cherbourg early today.
Mr McVicar said that Irish Ferries had stated when it brought in replacement crews from abroad for its Irish Sea vessels that it had to reduce costs to compete with its competitors.
He said that "horrifically", an ITF examination had found that Irish Ferries had been "mostly correct". It was found that Celtic Link was employing Russians, Romanians and Ukrainians for as little as €2 an hour.
A spokesman for Celtic Link could not be contacted last night.
Siptu general president Jack O'Connor said the opposition of governments in the past to the introduction of an EU ferries directive was largely responsible for the continuing problems of low standards in the Irish Sea.