Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the bosses are quaking in their boots after hearing that reply from the Minister. He made a point about sympathy. Workers do not want tea and sympathy, they want their jobs. They want to be able to pay their mortgages. They want to be able to pay for food to be put on the table over the coming weeks. Xtra-vision gave no prior notice except to a small group of workers and it then reneged on that deal last Tuesday.

I spoke to a young woman who has already had a mortgage payment taken from her wages. She got paid for the work she did the week before last. She worked three days last week and did not get paid for them, is owed holiday pay and expected a redundancy payment from Xtra-vision. This company has set up a shelf company to allow it to renege on its responsibilities to its workers. That is happening all the time, and this Government has done nothing to protect those workers from that activity. These are rogue employers who, like Clerys, set up other shelf companies and then tell their workers that they have no rights and that they should apply for statutory redundancy.

I would like to know how much the insolvency fund has paid out in the past five years to workers who have been subjected to these conditions by their bosses.

The Minister made a point about legislation. The fact is that the collective bargaining legislation is not and was never going to be strong enough to take on rogue employers. Tesco is a profitable multinational company. Last week it called workers in and told them it would change their contracts. Only because there is a strong union involved, namely, Mandate, will the workers be protected in any way. However, they must go through a process. If the union had not been there, I have no doubt those workers would have been left high and dry. The Government has not lived up to its responsibility to bring in much stronger collective bargaining. As John Douglas stated when the appeared before the relevant Oireachtas committee, directors who do such things should be barred from being directors of other companies in the future. The situation will continue unless the new Government, which I hope will be a progressive Government of the left, is serious about tackling such issues. Will the Minister fast-track the process for Xtra-vision workers who are waiting for their statutory redundancies?

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