Food service jobs accounted for more than half of the employment law irregularities uncovered last year, as Ireland struggles with a lack of workplace inspectors, research shows.
The food service sector accounted for 54% of employment permit law breaches in 2023, the report by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the European Migration Network (EMN) found.
Other sectors responsible for a significant number of breaches that were uncovered include the health and beauty (12%), and wholesale (11%) sectors.
Workers who are employed illegally pose a problem for the State in terms of tax take and regulation, while such employees are also in a precarious position due to their lack of statutory rights.
However, the research is based upon breaches of employment law legislation. The researchers acknowledged that their work is therefore hampered by the overall lack of workplace inspectors in Ireland in general and the consequent lack of hard information on which to draw conclusions.
“There’s a commitment to increase the number of inspectors from 63 to 80,” Emma Quinn, a researcher with the ESRI and one of the paper’s three authors, said.
“Even if you did go to 80, it would be a fairly low number if you think about the number of workers in the State.
That’s 80 inspectors for every 29,000 employees. That would be a pretty ambitious workload
Ms Quinn described the subject of irregular employment as “such a hidden issue”.
“One of the frustrating things is that information is...
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