Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the issue of the Debenhams workers. I have seen the correspondence between the Minister and Mandate, as I am sure many Members have. I will pick up on Mandate's last letter in which it notes that when the legislation was amended in 2007 no legislator sought to amend the particular aspects of the Act relating to the responsibility of the liquidator. It also refers a European Court of Justice ruling that provided that the obligation to engage still applies even where a company has been wound up by a court. That obligation, in this case, falls to the liquidator.

In this case, the liquidator has even more responsibility and an even greater obligation. The liquidator, KPMG, is in receipt of lucrative Government contracts. It received more that €25 million for advice on the broadband scheme, and look where that left us. It consistently receives millions of euro from all Departments. It is not acceptable for KPMG to walk away from its responsibility. I would like the Minister to comment on that and to do her best, given the level of sympathy and admiration she has for the workers, to pursue this issue with vigour and urgency. There will be more workers like the Debenhams workers coming after them.

My second question is on maternity leave. Rather than banging on about the shocking injustice and discrimination imposed on people who are on maternity leave through the denial of the wage subsidy scheme, I ask the Minister to consider extending the period of maternity leave and benefit for all of those who are currently on maternity leave, in the same way that we extended the time for planning applications and suspended aspects of legislation such as the Redundancy Payments Act. We have made exceptions in lots of areas of legislation and in the application of the State's rules. I ask this on behalf of the tens of thousands of women who have signed the online petition on this issue and are fearful of going back to work or being forced back to work and who do not have access to the wage subsidy scheme. Must they leave their children behind when there is no childcare available? I ask the Minister to extend maternity leave and benefit for the duration of the crisis in the same way the Government is extending the courtesy to other areas of society.

My final question is on direct provision. Will the Minister explain in detail, if she can, why the pandemic unemployment payment was denied to workers living in direct provision who lost their jobs in this crisis, as did many other hundreds of thousands of people, and have not been able to carry out any economic activity? More than 1,200 residents of direct provision centres have work. They include between 400 and 500 people who work in our health services to whom the issue of access to the pandemic unemployment payment obviously does not apply. The Department's website states that the pandemic unemployment payment is available to all employees and self-employed who have lost their employment due to a downturn in economic activity caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The website does not state, however, that this does not apply to those in direct provision. Why do we always make an exception for residents in the direct provision service? Doing so shows that the State's history in this regard is one of abuse of those who live in that service.

We saw much of that today with the Minister for Justice and Equality and his apologies, and the lack of same. The statement says their accommodation and basic needs are covered but if somebody has a job, he or she may have invested in a car, sent his or her children to certain schools, taken out loans and so on. Now these people are suffering a reduction of €311 per week. They get the direct provision payment but not the PUP. Will the Minister please explain why?

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