Irish Ferries' decision to replace 543 Irish staff with cheaper foreign workers highlighted why the next round of partnership talks would have to address the issue of "social dumping", Ictu general secretary David Begg said yesterday. Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, reports.

He said the law as it stands seemed to be "totally inadequate" for situations such as that at Irish Ferries where, he said, there is an attempt to replace people working under Irish employment law with people working under no national employment law.

Mr Begg was commenting as he made his way into talks concerning Irish Ferries with the National Implementation Body, the body set up under the Sustaining Progress agreement.

Yesterday, Siptu alleged that Irish Ferries has begun looking for lower-paid workers to man its Rosslare-Pembroke route three weeks' ago.

Branch secretary Paul Smyth said the company was seeking lower paid workers before it had received the consultants' report commissioned in June as part of an effort to resolve the dispute.

The company got the report, commissioned as part of the Labour Court process, on September 15th.

"Presumably the findings, which showed that they could continue to provide a commercially viable service with long serving, unionised Irish personnel, were the last thing they wanted to hear when they can recruit staff abroad at €3.60 an hour, or less," said Mr Smyth.

"It is no wonder the company rejected the report prepared by Greg Sparks and Martin King within 24 hours of receiving it."

A spokesman for the company said it would not be commenting.

The approaches looking for cheaper labour were allegedly made on behalf of Irish Ferries by Dobson's Fleet Management, a Cyprus-based company that already provides management services to Irish Ferries on the Rosslare-Roscoff/Cherbourg route, where non-Irish workers are now employed at rates as low as €3.50 and perhaps lower, according to the union.

The company has been served with strike notice by Siptu following its decision this week to seek 543 voluntary redundancies.

On his way into the talks before the National Implementation Body, Turlough O'Sullivan, of employers' group Ibec, said the reality of the situation was that Irish Ferris was highly uncompetitive vis-a-vis other carriers on the Irish Sea.

Without addressing costs, all the jobs at Irish Ferries would be lost. He said the company employs hundreds of people in "extremely high paid jobs".

"Most reasonable people", he said, would agree that it would be better to have "several hundred moderately paid jobs, than no jobs".

Asked if he would have a difficulty with Irish Ferries paying €3 a hour to staff, Mr O'Sullivan said the reality was that that the Irish minimum wage was almost the highest in the EU.

Ireland was seriously uncompetitive and if the issue was not addressed "Ireland will haemorrhage jobs on a large scale".

He said the possibility of workers on Irish Ferries being paid €3 an hour did not arise.

There was no justification for the strike notice as the redundancies being sought by the company were on a voluntary basis, he said.

He said the company had an exemplary record when it came to dealing with the Labour Court.

Mr Begg said the move by Irish Ferries was "a serious issue for the Irish labour market".

It would have implications throughout the economy if it went ahead, he said.

"It raises a fundamental question for us as a country. Do we want to engage in a race to the bottom in terms of the employment conditions of our people?"

He cited the issues which arose earlier this year with Turkish construction company Gama as another example of what he said was an extremely worrying trend.

There was no statement after the partnership talks, which were expected to be preliminary and exploratory.