Employers found to have hired migrant workers without required work permits will face fines of up to €250,000 and 10 years' imprisonment under a proposed law due to take effect in the coming month.
The measure will close an anomaly whereby it has not been an offence for employers to hire illegal, non-national workers, while it was an offence for the unauthorised worker.
It is part of a package of immigration measures approved by the Cabinet yesterday which are aimed at tightening controls in the asylum and immigrant labour areas. The amendments to the Immigration Bill 2001 will be brought before the Seanad today by the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell.
He said it had been "grossly unfair" that employers hiring illegal workers were immune from prosecution. "Our feeling was that it's a bit unrealistic to make it illegal for people to work here without a permit when the only person who can be punished is the more vulnerable person in the transaction, the employee, and the employer can exploit that situation to drive down wages," he told The Irish Times last night.
He said under current law people who hired domestic workers could keep them in "an economic pin-down situation by saying that if they didn't keep working they would shop them". The new provision would mean that employers who hire non-nationals without required work permits will face a fine of €3,000 or conviction for 12 months.
On indictment, the fine increases up to €250,000 or a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment, or both. It will be a defence for employers to establish that they were duped by false documentation or had taken reasonable steps to ensure that the person was legally entitled to work for them.
Work permits are required for migrant workers from outside the European Economic Area, which consists of the EU states as well as Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.
Mr McDowell said the sanctions on indictment were set high in a bid to ensure that employers took the offence seriously.
Other amendments to the Immigration Bill approved by Cabinet yesterday include tightened deadlines for asylum applicants who do not actively pursue their claims for refugee status.
Some 45 per cent of asylum applicants "disappear into the woodwork" instead of following up their cases, said the Minister. Under the amendments, asylum-seekers who fail to meet new deadlines for pursuing their claims will be deemed to have withdrawn them.
Mr McDowell also signalled to the Cabinet yesterday the broad outline of future proposed amendments to the Immigration Bill to foreshorten the removal process of unsuccessful asylum applicants and ensure that asylum claims are made at the point of entry to the country.
He said he had informed the Cabinet of changes in UK law obliging asylum claimants to lodge their applications at ports or face forfeiting their entitlements to social welfare benefits. "I warned them that the law of gravity here is that I am going to have to do something similar otherwise we will see a problem being exported from the UK to Ireland."
A Labour Party spokesman said last night that the idea of a fine of €250,000 and 10 years' imprisonment was "a total criminal law overkill," and it would oppose the amendment.
"The procedural changes to the asylum applications system are a further tightening of the noose around asylum-seekers who are a very vulnerable category of people and many of whom will not be able to fit into the Minister's bureaucratic straight-jacket," he added.