Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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I welcome our witnesses. I am trying to get my head around some of the proposals to get an idea of where they might apply and where they might not apply. Let us suppose we had a situation where we had a company that struck an agreement with its workers for enhanced redundancy and standard redundancy within that company. Let us suppose there had actually been a redundancy situation in that company, perhaps some years before, and the terms of that agreement had been adhered to. Then the company went into liquidation and became insolvent. At the moment, the legal entitlement of the workers is to the statutory minimum. They have no more than that as an entitlement. As I understand it, the proposal from the report would make the workers, collectively, a preferential creditor. It would increase their chances of drawing down enhanced redundancy from the pot. Is that broadly where it is at? Can the report authors comment on that?