Irish meat companies have been invited to recruit butchers from Nepal on the basis that they are "shy and do not cause trouble" and will be "thrilled" to earn the national minimum wage.
Videos of the prospective employees, each de-boning a leg of beef after holding up an identification number, were also circulated to the meat companies concerned. Employers were invited to view the videos and choose the butchers they required.
The recruitment agency involved, which has offices in Limerick and Malaysia, says it has placed about 3,000 workers in Ireland over the past two years.
The agency, PC Recruitment, is owned by Mr Patrick Coyle, a native of Co Meath who has lived in Asia for the past 22 years.
In a letter to Irish meat companies last October, Mr Coyle said he was currently supplying butchers and meat de-boners to the UK for meat processing factories.
"I am enclosing a sample video CD ROM of Nepalese butchers at work de-boning a leg of beef. I can supply you with similar people for your factory," he wrote.
"Their level of English will not be high but I can ensure that at least one good English speaker accompanies each batch so he can act as the liaising person between management and workers." The "good ones" could de-bone a leg of beef "in less than a minute", the letter continued.
"Just tell them once what you want doing and they will be fine. Nepalese are renowned for being a hard-working and disciplined people. They are shy and do not cause trouble. Nepal is a desperately poor nation and these people earn no more than $50 per year in Nepal, so they will be thrilled to earn the Irish minimum wage.
"They will not cause problems as their only reason for going there is to earn money.
"The biggest problem you will have with them is to get them to stop work and go home at the end of the day, as they will be mad to earn as much overtime as they can get."
The contents of the letter were described yesterday as "very disturbing" by the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr David Begg.
He said it was an example of migrant workers being treated "as commodities to be auctioned off to employers like livestock in a cattle market". Mr Begg said the "lack of regulation" of recruitment agencies was encouraging their uncontrolled growth and facilitating the exploitation of migrant workers by Irish employers.
However, Mr Coyle, speaking to The Irish Times from Malaysia, claimed Mr Begg's criticisms were "off the wall" and denied that his agency exploited workers. The agency was licensed in Ireland and operated strictly in accordance with the law, and did not charge workers for its services.
It was paid a fee by its company clients. He held copies of the employment contracts for all of the workers he had sent to Ireland, most of them to the catering trade, and each was being paid at least the minimum wage.
"It is a fact of life that someone from Nepal will be delighted to work for the minimum wage, but nowhere do I suggest they should not be paid more." He had personally made the videos, he said.
None of the meat companies circulated had recruited any of the workers concerned, he added.
