Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank both ICTU and Retail Excellence for their presentations. What strikes me is that we are seeing the dilemma evident in the two presentations in that people are looking at the same set of circumstances through different ends of the binoculars. What I would be interested to know from both sides is what our committee can do to help get this strategy off the ground because we need a retail strategy to cover many issues, including the issues that have been ventilated but also the challenge of climate, the circular economy, the elimination of plastic from our retail chain, more sustainable methods of production, and so on. There are many tricky issues where retail will be at the epicentre for much of the change that is going to happen - for example, in the sharing economy. I can see both sides. I can see the precarious nature of some of the employment and, indeed, the threat of more of that, going by some trends in the sector, but also the difficulty of low margins. It would be interesting to see if we can see a few shared pillars of what that strategy might be, whether it be around pay and conditions and training or around the circular economy and the change that will bring. If there were some shared pillars of this strategy, our committee would certainly be willing to assist. To be fair to the Minister of State, Deputy English, he is an experienced and flexible person who would try to facilitate that move forward. How much shared ground is there?

On this mandatory request from Government, as I understand it the only way you can force the reduction in a contract is through court supervised processes. That is why our committee has just heard of a small company rescue scheme, and the Bill will go through the Houses. That will allow more informal ways of tackling these things.

On the issue of requiring someone to go to mediation, I am surprised that many of them do not go to mediation before court anyhow, but does it solve anything? If these landlords are not willing to get involved in codes of conduct, will having a Government requirement that they must go to a mandatory meeting of some sort change the outcome? That is the question I have. It is important to understand that sometimes the other side of the rent is often a pension fund. We have an image of landlords as people sitting back sipping claret wine or whatever, but some of these are people who have debts, so it is not all as easy to unravel as might meet the eye.

I would like to ask about this promotion. I agree there is going to be this retail experience and the bulk retail, which it seems will become increasingly separate sectors. What can Retail Excellence do to support a town centre first initiative? We have seen many of the big names vacate town centres.

Should Retail Excellence be promoting high street locations for some type of presentation to bring people back into the town centre, rather than deciding to go out of town for the cheaper rents and so on. Can we work together on this with Retail Excellence to see some quality in town centres? Much of what I see in town centres are the bookies and the pubs, and little else to attract people in apart from the hospitality sector.