Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Is it not the case that the only reason these issues are even being discussed is that workers took action and forced a response from this Government. I refer specifically to the cases of Vita Cortex, La Senza and Lagan Brick. The issue raised by those struggles is what the Government will do to prevent a recurrence of this. Workers want the Minister to ensure that workers who are owed money by companies will have first call in the administration process, and companies will not be able to shelter moneys owed to workers under other company names when those firms still trade in the State. Administrators like KPMG should have a strict code of conduct applied on how to treat workers in these cases.

There is a specific case where employees did not engage in an occupation but the Minister is aware of it and has done nothing. Workers for the Jane Norman chain received exactly the same outrageous treatment when they had contracts terminated in June 2011. They were not paid for a month and have still not received wages. The firm went into administration and the workers were still not paid the money owed. Some three or four months later, the Jane Norman chain, under the new ownership of Edinburgh Woollen Mills, again set up Jane Norman to trade in the State. The workers have still not been paid. Will the Minister intervene in this case, of which I believe he is aware, to ensure those workers are paid the month's wages they are owed, and that the situation cannot arise where a company sacks its workers, owes them money and redundancy, which still has not been paid, and then sets up again a few months later paying workers less and employing them on lower conditions? What is the Minister going to do about that?

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