Mr. David Smith:

I am very familiar with Waterford Crystal and TalkTalk because I was involved in all those programmes. The Deputy is correct that a pattern emerged around age then. Later, with the Debenhams case, it was similar. Many of the workers there were coming near to retirement. We have, therefore, tried to implement well-being supports, which is difficult to do. For those aged between 50 and 55, we have evidence to suggest that people are securing employment, albeit part-time employment, and it may not be in what they were trained to do initially.

The fund retrained people to do other things like becoming special needs assistants, SNAs, or other hobby-type employments. In all cases of redundancy, including Waterford Crystal and all the other ones, the unseen part is the impact on mental health. Through HR interventions, like Mr. McGrath has spoken about, we provide counselling and specialised support services but we do not broadcast that loudly because they are very personal. We have put those types of interventions in the background to help people move across.