Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Companies (Protection of Employees’ Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion

Mr. David Smith:

We will come back to the committee in writing on the issue of the local training initiatives, LTIs. On the redundancy side of the equation on the programmes we have outlined - I include Debenhams in this - from 2010 to 2017, approximately 80% of the unique beneficiaries passing through the European-funded programmes were reskilled and retrained into new employment opportunities. There was a massive effort in that area. We operate that fund to provide tailored supports in addition to what the State already provides. That cohort of beneficiaries, including our colleagues in Debenhams, are ring-fenced and managed directly by SOLAS. That is how it works. It is a very different and very focused way of achieving activation. It takes a lot of support because these people have been through something very traumatic. As we have learned over ten years and as we have seen recently with Debenhams, these events cause severe trauma. We are at the coalface. We are the first in. We try to deal with the trauma and allow people to make their own choices, in which we aid them as best we can. As Mr. McGrath has pointed out, more than 954 workers were affected at Debenhams. We engaged with workers before and after the event. There were 388 unique beneficiaries but we are engaging with 516 to 520. The key point in all of this is about how we integrate with the workers' committee, from the trade unions all the way through. We have workers on the committee to represent their members. We can pivot supports based on the advice of that committee. That is what we have had to do in the case of Debenhams. We had to review the grants and expenditure and pivot them towards specific needs. Does that answer the question? We can come back with more information.