Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister is aware, the significance of this case is due to the fact that the insolvency was preceded by a company restructuring which involved a separation of the trading business that employed the staff from its major asset, namely, the Clerys building. The operating company was then declared insolvent and went into liquidation. The employees lost their entitlements without notice or consultation and without payment of their statutory redundancy, but that was fixed up. In effect, what happened was that a situation was engineered in which people's entitlements and the payment to them of €2.5 million was placed onto the shoulders of the Department and the taxpayers and in which the company got away scot free. This is not good enough, and workers who had given their lifetimes were dismissed without leave or consultation or anything else.

Section 599 comes from the 1990 Act and was repeated verbatim in the 2014 Act. It is about bringing assets of a connected company into a liquidation on the grounds of fairness and equity. It is used in New Zealand, from where we borrowed it, but has never been invoked. This is the area on which there should be a focus. The provision is designed and custom-built for the purpose that arose at Clerys. It is time the shackles were thrown off and the legislation was used to pursue the issue that has arisen. If the advice from the Attorney General comes through - and I understand it could be positive - will the State invoke the legislation to ensure this money is recovered?

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