Fishing boat owners not signing up for new permits required by law from Monday

Just 53 of the 500 permits have been sought by boat owners for non-EU fishermen on their vessels, even though the permits are required by law from next Monday.

From that day, all non-EU fishermen seeking to work in the industry here will have to have “atypical worker permission” and be given proper contracts of employment and be paid statutory minimum wages as employees of the boat owner.

However, according to Ken Fleming of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) a conference on the industry was told by the Department of Justice yesterday that just 53 applications for the permits have been received and only 40 granted — 12 are pending and one has been refused.