Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As I understand it, the Duffy Cahill report has raised a couple of issues. The primary issue concerns the consultation period, the secondary issue concerns this hiding of assets and a third issue is collective deals for the future. As for the first, the issue of making it obligatory to have consultation in an insolvency, is there consensus on this being a correct way forward? It seems reasonable to me that there should be consultation in an insolvency. I know there are some things to be tidied up, such as the issue of not trading while insolvent and so on, but I think it can be done.

The secondary issue concerns the hiding of assets. Mr. Duffy and Ms Cahill are obviously not going to give evidence on a particular case, but is there any consensus as to whether Debenhams concealed assets? I know there has been a lot of argumentation, but have lawyers on different sides established whether assets have been fraudulently put away in order to prevent workers getting their entitlement?

The third question concerns recommendation 6. Have I misunderstood it? My understanding is that what the recommendation says is that a collective deal which could involve more than statutory redundancy could become a burden on an insolvency fund but only if the employer had failed to undertake his or her obligations to consult. The difficulty I have is that I can see how this can be argued, but does applying it in the Debenhams case, where there was no law obliging the company to consult at the time, not create a real problem? Even if we introduce this, one cannot retrospectively create an obligation on the company to have consulted. At the time it was the law that it did not have to consult, so that trigger requires a change in two areas of law which raise a retrospective issue here because one cannot change the law in respect of an obligation on a company, even if the State were to undertake certain responsibilities in that situation.

My last question concerns the proposal being considered by the Department to create some sort of fund in respect of which we do not know how contributions to it will be made. Is it to cover collective agreements in every case or solely in cases of companies that have failed in respect of some specific legal obligation?