Ms Maeve McElwee:

I am suggesting that you would be requiring employers to negotiate and to give binding effect to agreements they understand to be voluntary, which in many ways would impinge on their rights from the point of view of whether this can be made legally binding. It was not negotiated in the framework of understanding that this could ever be a legally binding agreement. It is negotiated as best as possible and in the face of the prevailing circumstances. As I said, very rarely would any employer sit down and negotiate a redundancy agreement it would expect to see in the event of a liquidation or an insolvency arising. Typically, these types of redundancy agreements are negotiated with a view to making sure the business can continue to operate as a going concern, not with redundancy or insolvency in mind.