By Mairead Carey

THERE is growing pressure on the government to review its immigration policy if talks with the social partners on a new national pay deal are to go ahead.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the largest union SIPTU have already deferred talks on a national pay agreement amid fears of job displacement and exploitation of foreign workers.

On Tuesday Labor Party leader Pat Rabbitte called for a reassessment of immigration policy in the light of the Irish Ferries dispute and evidence of the displacement of Irish workers in a range of industries.

He said a new work permit system to control the numbers of people coming to work in Ireland from outside the state may be necessary.

“The time may be coming when we will have to sit down and examine whether we would have to look at whether a work permits regime ought to be implemented in terms of some of this non-national labor, even for countries in the European Union,” he said.

According to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, a record 70,000 came to Ireland to work in the 12 months to April, reversing the trend in what has traditionally been a country of emigration.

In an interview with The Irish Times, Rabbitte said that unless basic standards for workers were established across the EU, Irish jobs would be threatened.

The recent dispute at Irish Ferries had raised serious questions, he said. Irish Ferries last month tried to replace all its Irish staff with cheap foreign labor and planned to pay its new workers less than the minimum wage.

The dispute saw hundreds of thousands of Irish workers take to the streets in a national day of protest.

“What Irish Ferries has done has lanced the boil, and we need to know more about the numbers coming here, the kind of work they are engaged in, the displacement effect, if any, on other sectors,” Rabbitte said.

“We can’t compete now in the traditional type industries. The rate of attrition in terms of job losses has been far higher than we have acknowledged. It has been concealed by the scale of the boom.

“There are many positive spin-offs from the diversity of labor here now, but to say that that should for all time go unregulated, I think, has been thrown into question by the Irish Ferries dispute.

“Displacement is going on in the meat factories and it is going on in the hospitality industry and it is going on in the building industry.”

Claims by the employers group IBEC and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern that what happened in the Irish Ferries dispute was confined to maritime industries was nonsense, Rabbitte said.

“If the EU services directive goes ahead you can establish a company in Poland or Latvia and come over here on contract and do an Irish Ferries. You get an agency to employ the workers here at domestic rates in Poland or Latvia. It is a big issue,” Rabbitte said.

“There are 40 million or so Poles after all, so it is an issue we have to have a look at.”