Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

The Minister has avoided many of these issues which have not been sorted. Some La Senza workers are not being paid social welfare for the days of the sit-in. Tens of thousands of workers are waiting for statutory redundancy payments. Some cases came in under the radar before Christmas. The Minister has made a lot of points about the industrial relations machinery of the State, such as the LRC, but what will he do given that there is a waiting list of 74 weeks for rights commissioner cases? That is nearly a year and a half. We have 15 rights commissioners and 44 staff in the LRC. That is a reduction on the previous staff number yet, as the Minister acknowledged, the demands are greater. He is not resourcing the machinery on which he seeks to rely. What will he do about that? Why is he continuing to use agencies such as KPMG for statutory or Government work given that it has been involved in bad practice?

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