Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

If an employee is unfairly dismissed, for example, or an intern is mistreated or whatever, it takes around two to three years to get a case heard in the Labour Court or the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. By the time the case reaches the court, the employer no longer exists, even though the company that got section 481 tax credit for that production on which the employee worked still exists, and that company says it has no relationship with the employee, even though the DAC was 100% owned by that company. To me, that is a problem because it means the employees and the trainees do not have an employer they can go back to once the DAC is gone. Therefore, all of the legislation those companies are required to sign up to is meaningless. The Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 is meaningless if the only legal employer an employee ever had only existed for a year and a half or less, for example, six months. Do the witnesses know what I mean? I just do not understand how the workers or the trainees can have any kind of rights, continuity or recognition of their service if their employer disappears after a period, even though their actual employer that got the money clearly still exists, but says it is not their employer.