Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have sympathy for the view that we must be careful not to place an onerous liability on a company whereby it ends up having negative consequences for the existing workers. That is why we chose the words "positive net revenues". The last line in my amendment deals with the parent company. Increasingly, parent companies set up an Irish subsidiary using loans from the parent company. When they decide to wind up, the first port of call for the liabilities is obviously the Revenue Commissioners, because they must pay off whatever debts they have to them, and then they turn to paying off the debt to the parent company. The last port of call is often the workers, who might not get enhanced redundancy payments. If there is a DB scheme, there is pressure to reduce the amounts or make wrong provision for the existing members and the deferred members. The pensioners under existing law will get up to 100% of the fund that is in place. Is there an EU directive on this and does it cover companies located in the European Union whose parent company is in the EU, to ensure they do not evade their responsibility in a member state, or is there a compensatory scheme in place similar to that which applies if a company closes in Ireland and relocates somewhere within the European Union? I recall that when Dell closed there was a fund available to help retrain workers and so forth.