Junior enterprise minister Tony Killeen last week revealed that, while he plans to treble the number of inspectors from 31 to 90 by the end of next year at a cost of 11.5m, the requirements for the job "do not provide for competency in minority languages."

Labour party spokesman on enterprise, Ruairi Quinn . . . who quizzed Killeen in the Dail on the development . . . described the lack of a foreign language requirement as "totally inadequate."

Killeen had explained that while inspectors do "come into contact and engage with migrant workers in the course of investigations, " a substantial portion of their work involves examination of employment records.

"Where the need for interpretation services are required, such as in taking of statements from employees or the translation of documents, the inspectorate has adequate access to a panel of competent individuals who can provide the services necessary in a broad range of languages, " he said.

But Quinn said this was bureaucracy gone mad and wouldn't work. "If, for example, the inspectors were visiting a mushroom factory where they believed migrant workers were being exploited, to confirm such abuse they would not be able to talk to the workers but would have to return to base, hire a translator and return to the factory, " he told the Sunday Tribune.

Most migrant workers were fearful of authority figures, he said, adding that it wouldn't help if the government's inspectors, who were supposed to ensure they had proper wages and conditions, couldn't understand a word they were saying.

More than 10% of the Irish workforce . . . or 200,000 workers . . . are foreign and around half of these are from Poland, so at least five of the 60 new inspectors should be fluent in Polish, said Quinn.

The Labour TD said it should be remembered that the government needed and encouraged migrant workers to come to Ireland and help keep the economy going. Not all the Poles or Latvians were going to return home, he said, so this was a question of encouraging integration as opposed to marginalisation.

"If we don't integrate them into society, we will make the same mistakes as the French and Germans, " he warned.