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

On the second point, it is not just a question of whether there was illegality. It is a question of whether the law is robust enough to vindicate the rights of workers in a case where the owner of a company has assets and moneys elsewhere which, if they could be accessed, would discharge his redundancy payment obligations to the workers instead of leaving them high and dry. The Minister should be considering legislation to ensure this will be the case.

I welcome the fact the Minister is reviewing the exemptions under industrial relations legislation. Would that ensure there could be no question that employers or the administrators who are subsequently appointed could act in the same manner as Jane Norman? Jane Norman is up and running again and is employing other people on lower rates while the company still has not paid off the workers it let go last summer. Is it the purpose of the review to ensure that this will not happen again and that those workers will be paid?

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