Turkish workers in dispute with Gama Construction over pay and conditions are protesting at the company's headquarters in Dublin this afternoon at its plan to dismiss them from their jobs and accommodation.
Around 300 of the Turkish company's 800 staff in Ireland are on a work stoppage in protest over pay and conditions.
Gama, which has admitted to underpaying wages and failing to keep proper employment records, has told the workers they will be removed from its payroll and asked to leave their accommodation within the next five days.
Around 230 Gama employees are affected by the move, including 130 for whom the company says it has no work and wants to repatriate to Turkey.
The company said this evening that the protesting workers had not been sacked and added they had "jobs to return to either in Ireland or Turkey" but were "refusing to do so".
A statement issued on behalf of the company goes on to say that while as long as the protesting workers remained off the Gama payroll they were "no longer the responsibility of the company" and added that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had been advised that the work and residency permits "of many of these employees have expired".
Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, who first raised questions about Gama in the Dáil, said the workers were beginning to get the wages which had been deposited in bank accounts in the Netherlands and now wanted to be compensated for unpaid overtime.
"They are absolutely determined to resist this bullying by Gama," he said.
Mr Higgins has advised the workers to stay in their accommodation so that the company will be forced to get court orders if it wants to move them. "The workers have to stay put until all the issues have been resolved," he said.
The protesting workers assembled in Ballymun at 2pm for the march to Gama's headquarters in the Norwood Business Park in Santry.
Last week, the High Court ruled that Minister for Enterprise and Employment Micheál Martin could not publish a labour inspectors' report on the company, pending further proceedings.
However, Judge Peter Kelly said the report could be released to the Garda fraud squad, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Revenue Commissioners, the director of corporate enforcement, the Competition Authority and the Garda National Immigration Bureau.