One of the State's largest building companies is to pay lump sums of £600 each to 16 illegal immigrants found working on a site in Dublin.
The payment by G.C. Crampton follows the discovery earlier this week that nearly 30 labourers working for a sub-contractor at the company's Leopardstown development were not receiving their full entitlements and were paying £30 a week in "expenses" to a Moroccan who had found them the jobs.
Cramptons has agreed to take on all the workers who have work permits as direct employees. The company, SIPTU and the Construction Industry Federation are to lobby the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, jointly to seek work permits for the illegal immigrants.
The lump-sum payments are to help the illegal workers get by while an effort is made to regularise their situation. Some of the workers have been in Ireland several months, and a spokesman for the CIF said Cramptons wanted to do what it could to help them because of the "productivity and high quality of their work".
The company's personnel and safety manager, Mr Thomas Moloney, said it became concerned at the plight of the men as soon as it was brought to its attention by the union. "We are working with SIPTU to address the matter," Mr Moloney said.
A meeting had been arranged with the sub-contractor concerned, Mr Eamon O'Neill, to discover how the situation had arisen. Mr Moloney said Cramptons would ensure the full terms of the registered employment agreement for the industry were complied with and this was a requirement with all sub-contractors and agencies.
The SIPTU assistant branch secretary, Mr Mick Finnegan, said he had threatened to serve strike notice unless the plight of the workers was addressed. He thanked bricklayers on the site - members of the Building and Allied Trades Union - for agreeing to support industrial action if required.
Mr Finnegan described the conditions of the foreign workers as "absolutely unbelievable, like something out of the Middle Ages". He estimated they were owed between £80,000 and £100,000 in unpaid overtime and travel-time payments.
Workers on the site were from Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, France, Portugal, Italy and Romania. Most of the illegals are Romanian. Some had paid between £1,000 and £2,000 to be brought into Ireland.
A shop steward for the group, who asked not to named, said most of them had been recruited by a Moroccan intermediary, to whom they had to pay between £120 and £150 to obtain a job and a further £30 a week for "expenses".
The sub-contractor, Mr O'Neill, would only say last night that he "didn't short-change anybody".