A recruitment agency which offered Nepalese butchers to Irish meat companies on the basis that they were "shy" and would be "thrilled" to earn the minimum wage is being investigated by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
PC Recruitment, which has offices in Limerick and Malaysia, circulated meat companies last year with videos of the prospective employees, each deboning a leg of beef after holding up an identification number.
Employers were invited to view the videos and choose the butchers they required. "Just tell them once what you want doing and they will be fine," said a letter accompanying the video.
"Nepalese are renowned for being a hard-working and disciplined people. They are shy and do not cause trouble. Nepal is a desperately poor nation and these people earn no more than $50 per year in Nepal, so they will be thrilled to earn the Irish minimum wage."
In a written reply to a Dáil question by Labour deputy Mr Brian O'Shea, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, said the labour inspectorate of her Department had started an investigation into "allegations made in respect of the particular company".
"The investigation may be lengthy and time consuming as it may ultimately involve extending investigations to a number of other companies," she said.
The owner of PC Recruitment, Mr Patrick Coyle, denied in January - when details of the video and letter circulated to meat companies were reported in The Irish Times - that his agency exploited workers.
The company, he said, had placed about 3,000 workers in Ireland over the past two years, operated strictly in accordance with the law, and did not charge workers for its services. Instead, it received a fee from its company clients.
"It is a fact of life that someone from Nepal will be delighted to work for the minimum wage, but nowhere do I suggest they should not be paid more," he said.
The letter circulated by Mr Coyle to the meat companies said the level of English spoken by the Nepalese butchers would not be high.
"But I can ensure that at least one good English speaker accompanies each batch so he can act as the liaising person between management and workers."
The "good ones" could debone a leg of beef "in less than a minute", the letter continued.
"They will not cause problems as their only reason for going there is to earn money. The biggest problem you will have with them is to get them to stop work and go home at the end of the day, as they will be mad to earn as much overtime as they can get."
None of the meat companies circulated recruited any of the workers concerned.
The contents of the letter were described as "very disturbing" by the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr David Begg.
He said some migrant workers were being treated "as commodities to be auctioned off to employers like livestock in a cattle market".
Mr Begg said the "lack of regulation" of recruitment agencies was facilitating the exploitation of migrant workers.
