Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

It is not credible for the Minister of State to claim there is no lack of urgency here when there is a report from 2016. He is saying there is no lack of urgency because it was decided to deal with it in a programme for Government from July. That is not credible at all. If he goes through the Dáil transcripts for the past four years, he will find that it has been raised by Opposition Deputies repeatedly. It is true that in the particular context of Debenhams, it has been raised more often, but it was raised and the previous Government, of which the Minister of State was a member, was not interested in doing anything on it.

Does he feel bad for the Debenhams workers? Would he like to apologise on behalf of the Government for not moving on this, allowing the report to sit on the shelf, and having a situation where they are out on strike for 240 days at this stage?