states that such jobs are “not popular among our domestic population of workers by reason of the pay, the seasonality and the tough physical nature of the fieldwork”.
The letter, released under FOI, was forwarded to the Irish Refugee Protection Programme team, with one team member writing in early January 2015 that he suspected HIF “may be looking for the Department to help develop a proposal to use refugees to help fill employment gaps in a traditionally low paid job”.
Later that year, DEASP indicated to the Department of Justice that it “would welcome an opportunity to meet” with HIF to “discuss how we may support the Commercial Mushroom Producers”.