Sir, – In support of David McWilliams’s suggestion for the Irish Government to consider engaging with Chinese companies to assist building our railways (“We get electronics and cars from China, so why not let them build our rail infrastructure?”, Weekend, August 17th), Frank Fahey (Letters, August 20th) noted that some of our motorways have been built by Spanish and Turkish companies. He acknowledged there “were some problems in complying with Irish standards, but nothing that was not overcome”.

Compliance with employment standards has been at times very problematic and not always easily overcome. The long-running wages dispute involving workers and the Turkish GAMA construction company from 2005 received much publicity.

In another case, 180 workers employed by a consortium of Portuguese companies to build the Limerick-Nenagh motorway between 2007 and 2009 were subsequently found by the labour inspectorate to have been underpaid by €3 million. The workers and their solicitor spent 13 years seeking to recoup the underpayments through the Irish legal system.

The High Court in 2016 concluded that the companies had “engaged in the systematic and deliberate” under-recording of the workers hours and that the workers’ accommodation provided by the companies was “of a deplorable – perhaps, even, a dangerous standard”.

The workers’ legal quest took so long because, as noted by the Court of Appeal in 2019, the companies had “abused the courts process” and their “conduct had been designed to delay and frustrate the payment of any sums”.

Regardless of the origin of a company engaging in public works, the credibility of their tender bid must be interrogated, and robust systems should be in place to ensure workers do not bear the cost of faster, cheaper project delivery. – Yours, etc,

MICHELLE O’SULLIVAN,

JULIET McMAHON,

Department of Work and Employment Studies,

Kemmy Business School,

University of Limerick.