Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I join colleagues in expressing gratitude to Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection staff across the country, particularly in my own region in Dundalk, who have worked in a Trojan-like fashion since reality of this crisis dawned on us. They represent the very best of our civil and public servants and our civil and public service culture. Unfortunately, when difficult decisions may have to be taken over the next few months, an attempt is being made to divide private and public sector workers. We are all in this together and we need to remember that. We need to respond in solidarity and understanding.

I thank the Minister, if it is appropriate, and express my gratitude to her for the way in which she has conducted herself over the past couple of years. I particularly want to express my gratitude to her for the work she did to put the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act in place. The work she did on that, on an impartial and cross-party basis, stands to her and is an enormous legacy for her. The improvements that we all made together, in terms of providing more security for people in precarious work and more certainty around their hours and income will be an enormous legacy of which she can be proud. I am sorry that she was not re-elected and I hope if she chooses to stand for election again that she is elected. I know what it is like to lose a seat and then win it back. It is a difficult business, a difficult profession but it is a human business and I want to pay tribute to the Minister on a personal and professional level and thank her for the work she has done. We did not always agree but I think we worked well together to try to achieve a common objective.

Potentially thousands of jobs could be lost over the next few weeks and months as some big companies plan to exploit the pandemic that we are now experiencing in order to restructure their businesses and cut jobs. Assets will be moved out of the reach of creditors. When I say creditors, I include employees and the State. This is not an abstract issue. Debenhams has been referenced. I had the privilege of meeting a lot of Debenhams workers, with whom I have been working over the past few weeks, at the gates of Leinster House earlier. The Minister will recall that almost five years ago the Clerys workers were put out on O'Connell Street on a Friday afternoon, with very few rights and entitlements, as part of a property play. The operational part of the business was liquidated and the property that housed Clerys was essentially flipped and sold. We said at the time that this State would not allow that to happen again but the reality is that these things continue to happen. Indeed, they will continue to happen unless we take action. What has not changed, regrettably, is that the Government in which the Minister has served has not taken the opportunity to improve the legislative protections for workers caught up in liquidations like those at Debenhams and Clerys.

Four years ago, I published the recommendations from the Duffy Cahill report. That document proposed some very important legislative changes that would go towards protecting the interests of workers caught up in a liquidation and the interests of creditors, the small businesses that supply services and goods to large companies that go into liquidation. Will the Minister recommend that the legislation proposed in 2016 is finally delivered in order to protect the interests of workers who are caught up in liquidations? Will she also, in the interests of taxpayers, citizens and her Department, do something that no Minister has done to date, namely, deploy the provisions of section 599 of the Companies Act, which would allow her to go after the related assets of companies to try to retrieve resources that the State will have to make available to the workers who are caught up in this liquidation over the next few weeks, in terms of statutory redundancy payments?

Next week, the Minister will ask us to scrutinise the budget for her Department for the next few months and we know the Department is running through money at a rate of knots in responding to the crisis we are experiencing at the moment. She has put on record her commitment to continuing the €350 pandemic payment for a period, but I want her to go further than that, and it is important that she does. She needs to elaborate precisely what she wishes to do with that payment over the next few months because she is asking this House to free up taxpayers' resources to her Department to enable it to provide the resources that people need over the next few months to be able to make ends meet. It is imperative that the Minister makes it very clear what those resources are required for and how she intends to taper that payment, if that is what she wishes to do, as people start returning to work. I ask if she will take up a suggestion I made a number of weeks ago, which appears to be getting traction, that is, the development of a form of improved and enhanced short-time work scheme, customised for various sectors, to allow people to go back to work, given the hospitality and retail sectors are starting to reopen gradually.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc and economic carnage on those aged under 25. We know, from looking at the figures and from our own experience in families and communities and among the people we represent, that the jobless rate for those under 25 surged to 50% in April, which is a catastrophe. Is the Minister working with the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, and the Department of Finance to develop a new deal for a new generation and to give young people hope that the future will be better than the present? An enormous amount of work has to be done to provide hope for the future for the young people of Ireland.

I want to draw the attention of the Minister, as I did through a recent parliamentary question, to the recent National Economic and Social Council, NESC, report that developed an important trajectory that could be adopted by Government in terms of providing upskilling opportunities in the green economy around a just transition for younger workers, and developing a digital economy to make this country carbon neutral and to take the opportunities to move this country on, while enhancing economic opportunities for young people. I would appreciate the Minister's views on that report and her sense of where we are at present with regard to developing that new deal for this generation to make sure this massive cohort of young people who find themselves jobless have hope for the future. The Minister knows only too well they do not have the opportunity to get on a boat or an aeroplane to go to the UK, Australia, Canada or the US, as was the case in the previous recession. We need to provide opportunities here for our younger people in a sustainable fashion.

I thank the Minister for her clarity around the request from Safe Ireland. We have all received correspondence in recent weeks from organisations represented by Safe Ireland, including from the Drogheda Women's and Children's Refuge in my own home town and from Women's Aid in Dundalk. I thank the Minister for the update on that.

I join colleagues in remarking about my own concerns that those aged over 66 and those aged under 18 are essentially being left behind by this system that was introduced, as the Minister has pointed out time and again, literally in the space of a few hours to try to deal with a very serious issue for this country. I understand what the Minister is saying in regard to the working age payments. I have a huge concern about those aged over 66 and a particular concern about those aged under 18. I have received a lot of correspondence and many telephone calls from people in my constituency, such as early school leavers who left school at 15 and 16 and trained to work in the hospitality sector but who find themselves with nothing at all.

There is a further big issue at the moment, and while I do not have the solution, it is important this is raised. We have a significant cohort of people who would have expected to start seasonal work, some in my own area who would normally work in seasonal employment in the Minister's constituency, for example, at Tayto Park, which is a big employer of people from the Louth and Meath area, but who will not be taking up employment and will find themselves in difficulty as a result. We expect to see a spike in jobseeker's payments over the next period because people who might ordinarily go on to seasonal work will now be going onto jobseeker's payments.

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