Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It certainly was and if the Deputy suggests we take a broader policy view on it, that would be a separate discussion from what is recommended in the Duffy Cahill report but it is certainly something that can be looked at in the long term. It is not something that could be decided in the month of August or September.

The Deputy referenced Debenhams and the letters. We are undertaking this work in the Department and reviewing this area of redundancy and insolvency because it is in the programme for Government and because Mandate had two asks for me at a meeting in late July as part of the campaign on behalf of the Debenhams workers, which has brought this back into focus and rightly so.

One of the requests was its pursuit of what the workers wanted in terms of entitlements, payouts and so on. Second, part of its campaign was for the legislation to be changed to strengthen its position. I committed to that on behalf of the Tánaiste at that meeting. We are doing this work to see if we can strengthen that.