The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, has been accused of seriously misleading the public over the case of three Brazilian workers who were awarded damages after the High Court yesterday found they were being exploited.
Labour spokesperson on enterprise, trade and employment, Mr Tommy Broughan today said Ms Harney was wrong to contend in a radio interview this morning that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had not received a complaint from the workers over their pay and conditions.
Mr Broughan said one of the workers involved, Ms Neusa Da Silva Resende had made a formal complaint in August and had received a reply from the Department and a commitment to investigate.
"It is clear from the Tanaiste's comments this morning that she was either deliberately attempting to mislead the public or she does not know what is going on within her own Department.In either case, the workers involved and the general public are entitled to an explanation and an apology from Minister Harney."
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland Ms Harney said her Department had not received a complaint and that the case was "rightly" brought before the courts.
"Clearly if a contract of employment has been breached it's always a matter for the courts to adjudicate in relation to that matter but where immigrant workers or any other workers bring concerns to the attention of the labour inspectorate they are followed up," she said.
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However, after Mr Broughan's intervention, the Department acknowledged it had given the Minister wrong information.
Ms Harney was asked for comment in light of a High Court ruling yesterday in which At Hand Cleaning Services Ltd were instructed to pay three Brazilian nationals they had brought to Ireland €50,000.Mr Justice Kelly said the workers had been working under conditions "reminiscent of Charles Dickens's time".
The court heard they were working as many as 15 hours a day, were not being paid and were being brought to work in a van with windows blacked out by bin liners.
Yesterday, the Department suspended two schemes that allowed immigrant workers take up employment in Ireland without a work permit. They said the Intra-Company Transfer scheme and non-EEA Trainee Facility were suspended with immediate effect because of "growing evidence of misuse" of the schemes.
"Contrived arrangements are being put in place to exploit these facilities as a means of bypassing the Work Permit system and the domestic Labour Market.
"There is increasing concern about the role of some recruitment agencies in such schemes, as well as the fact that many of the staff currently being transferred are low-skilled or unskilled, whereas the Scheme was intended for very limited numbers of highly skilled or key personnel only," the Department said in a statement.
Ms Harney said this morning: "At a time when there are pressures in the economy we have decided to tighten quite substantially the number of work permits we're going to issue".
Mr Broughan today said the case of the Brazilian workers was "a particularly ugly example of what is now a growing pattern of the exploitation of foreign workers".
He called for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to be more proactive on the issue and for stronger legislation to be enacted.