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

Photo of Matt ShanahanMatt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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That is very precise. I now turn to SOLAS. We have been unfortunate in County Waterford that we have experienced high-level redundancies. The first was Waterford Crystal many years ago. We still had issues relating to this coming before the committee last week regarding the wind-up of Waterford Crystal. There is also Debenhams. On the funding and redundancy package that was on offer to Debenhams workers and its take-up, is there a fall-off in people accessing retraining and reskilling by age? I have a feeling about this and have spoken to some workers around Waterford. Once people get to their mid-50s they may find it hard to get back and engage in education or whatever because they feel they are at too much of a disadvantage. Can SOLAS comment on that? It did say that there was a transition of approximately 60% among people who were at lower levels of education who had gone onto further education or whatever, which is fantastic, but is there something specific for people aged over 55?