April 13, 2021 4:12 pm Meat Industry Ireland (MII) said that “every effort” has been made to recruit meat processing plant workers domestically in the last number of years. Today (Tuesday, April 13) the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment continued its pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of the Employment Permits (Consolidation and Amendment) Bill 2019. Representatives from MII and Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) attended, and Philip Carroll of MII told the committee that employment in the meat sector is “based on full-time direct employment and comprises a mixture of Irish and EU employees who represent some 80% of the total workforce”. “Irish staff continue to represent the single largest nationality. The majority, mainly European nationals, have worked in Ireland in the years since 2005, after EU enlargement, when a significant number of workers came from central and eastern Europe,” he said.