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The backlash against the fruit company Keelings has been criticized as “naive” by an Irish farmer.
The group was attacked after it chartered a flight from Bulgaria carrying dozens of strawberry pickers during the Covid-19 blockade.
The flight arrived from the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on Monday, April 13, with what Dublin-based Keelings says they are “qualified horticultural staff.”
Images of passengers arriving at Dublin airport appeared on social media on Thursday night, sparking outrage.
However, farmer and broadcaster Darragh McCullough criticized this reaction as “naive” and rejected claims that thousands of Irish workers could be hired to do the same job.
He told RTE Radio One: “The Irish have better job opportunities, they are not prepared to do the hard, physical jobs necessary to harvest and pack food for € 10 an hour.”
“As it happens, we have a group of workers in Eastern Europe who are more than willing.
“And it’s not just that they’re the only people prepared to work, it’s also the fact that, in my case on my farm, they’ve come every year for the past ten years.”
“They have developed the skills to be able to work quickly and efficiently and meet certain specifications.
“To train someone off the street, so to speak, it could take 6 months before they really get into their rhythm and at the same level as the people we’ve been employing for years.
“So I think it is a bit naive to suggest that we can suddenly turn around and employ hundreds, if not thousands, of Irish people willing to do the same job.”
And journalist Suzanne Campbell agreed that these workers are “essential” to food production in Ireland.
She added: “Most of the time we get our seasonal labor for the harvest from Romania and Bulgaria.
“Throughout the season it was estimated that this year we would need around 1,500 seasonal workers to enter.”
“I reported on a strawberry farm last year at the end of the season in Wexford, and the scale of these farms is huge, the amount of labor they use, that farm alone had 150 people, mainly from Romania and Moldova.
“And they really are essential for picking up these foods in Ireland. We would not have strawberries, particularly soft fruit, on the shelf without these people.”
“They usually come at the beginning of the season to help produce strawberries and raspberries, as well as broccoli and even iceberg lettuce towards the end of the summer.”
However, Fianna Fail TD Paul McAuliffe rejected suggestions that workers should have traveled here amid a pandemic.
He said: “Dublin is an open and welcoming city for migrant workers and they are, particularly in the northern county, very important.
“But it’s not about that, it’s not about any of those problems, it’s about the way we’re dealing with this pandemic.”
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