Mr. Kevin Duffy:

If I could deal in part with the Deputy's question, the proposal under section 6 is that compensation be available for a failure on the part of an employer to comply with the obligations under the Protection of Employment Acts. The Deputy is correct that if there is no contravention of the Acts, compensation cannot be awarded.

I take the Deputy's point about the collective agreement but what we are really talking about here are contracts of employment. As he knows, a collective agreement may be incorporated in the individual contract of employment or it can be an implied term that I talked about earlier. Indeed, ordinary creditors would not know, no more than what they would know about collective agreements, what was provided for in individual contracts of employment. It is not just a question of saying that the collective agreement would disturb the priority of other creditors. I am not sure it could do that. It would simply mean that people could have an entitlement to certain payments pursuant to their contract of employment and that those payments would attract priority. Does Ms Cahill have anything more to say on that?