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

I move:

That Dáil Éireann: notes that:

— over 1,400 workers in Debenhams Ireland faced mass lay-offs when the United Kingdom parent company announced it would no longer support the Irish subsidiary in April of this year;

— the company has not negotiated with the workers’ representatives since and that liquidators have been appointed;

— the workers have a collective agreement with Debenhams that guarantees an enhanced redundancy payment package of two weeks statutory plus two weeks;

— initially workers were informed that the company had liabilities of around €19 million, but this estimate has since been revised upwards to around €225 million;

— Debenhams Ireland had entered an arrangement as co-guarantor of a major debt facility of around £200 million utilised by the UK parent company in 2019;

— the Bank of Ireland is part of the consortium that includes Barclays bank and two United States-based hedge funds that triggered this process and this consortium are now effectively the owners of Debenhams UK; and

— workers are fearful that the insolvency of their company has all the hallmarks of a tactical insolvency which will leave them as creditors with nothing other than statutory entitlements;

further notes that:

— five years ago, Clerys department store closed and its workers were made redundant with no notification by their company;

— the Oireachtas responded by commissioning a report into the causes of the closure, and the manner in which workers were abandoned;

— the subsequent ‘Expert Examination and Review of Laws on the Protection of Employee Interests when assets are separated from the operating entity (Duffy-Cahill report)’ made several suggestions for legislative reform to ensure workers would not be abandoned in any subsequent closure or liquidation process; and

— to date the Oireachtas has failed to legislate for any of the areas examined by the Duffy-Cahill report;

condemns:

— the failure of past Governments to legislate to protect workers in these situations; and

— the actions of the consortium now in control of Debenhams and specifically the role of the Bank of Ireland, which were bailed out by the Irish State in 2008;

sends a message of support to the Debenhams workers for the stance they have taken to protect their livelihoods;

recognises:

— the plight of the Debenhams workers and the decades of service many have rendered to their company;

— the threat of mass redundancies facing many other workers in many sectors and industries in the coming period; and

— in the case of Debenhams, the State is the first creditor that the liquidators seek to settle with on amounts due for various taxes and rates owed;

calls on the Government to:

— legislate as a priority to strengthen the rights of workers facing redundancies and layoffs, and specifically to legislate to:

— reorder the priority afforded to workers as creditors in any liquidation process by amending section 621 of the Companies Act 2014;

— amend the Protection of Employment Act 1977 to increase the compensation for workers from four weeks to two years in cases where their employer has contravened sections 9 and 10 of the Act; and

— amend all appropriate legislation such as the ‘Protection of Employment Acts’ as called for in the Duffy-Cahill report to ensure that where agreements for enhanced redundancies have been negotiated with workers, these are honoured as preferential creditors in any subsequent liquidation process; and

in recognition of the failure of the State to act in this area and to protect workers like those in Debenhams, calls on the Minister for Finance, Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the Taoiseach to:

— notify the liquidators in Debenhams that the State will forgo its priority as a creditor and instruct the liquidator to use funds realised instead to pay the enhanced redundancy payments agreed between the Debenhams workers and the company;

and

— immediately initiate negotiations with representatives of the Bank of Ireland to ensure the workers receive the full collective redundancy package previously agreed with the Debenhams company.

I am sharing time with Deputies Gino Kenny and Mick Barry. The treatment of 1,400 Debenhams workers by Debenhams, a very large company that continues to make profits in this country through online sales and which continues to operate in the North of this country and operate and make money in Britain, has been nothing short of despicable. We have heard descriptions from workers about how, essentially, they were tricked by the company using the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic to suggest that various things it was doing, such as stocktaking in stores and movement of goods etc., were related to the Covid-19 issue. These had nothing to do with Covid-19 but instead were related to a tactical liquidation, using the cover of the pandemic to dump these 1,400 workers, most of whom had worked for the company for decades. These workers gave loyal service in Debenhams stores all across the country but were dumped in the most cynical way.

Our motion seeks the justice that should have been given to these workers if previous Governments had acted to tackle similar actions in this country over recent years. The most recent case is that of Clerys, which had a similar liquidation process and where workers were dumped. Before that we have the examples of La Senza, Vita Cortex and Thomas Cook. They are just the cases I am familiar with, although there are probably others that people can remind me of. Time and again, and particularly in the retail sector and department stores, retail workers have been treated in this absolutely outrageous way.

After the Clerys dispute, the Duffy-Cahill report was produced, which suggested that there should be a reordering of the priority of creditors in cases of liquidation in order to ensure that workers could not be treated in this way. This would ensure workers would become priority creditors when it came to the liquidation of assets, companies would not be able to run away with assets and other people could not take priority over the workers who generated the wealth, as Debenhams workers have done over many years. Successive Governments have failed to do this. Five years after the Clerys dispute, this has not been done and the Debenhams workers find themselves in their current position.

The cynicism of Debenhams goes on as clearly this was orchestrated well in advance of Covid-19. This company has significant assets and we only need to know what is in the stores around the country to see that it has tens of millions of euro in assets. It also has an online business. Essentially, the company tried to take the assets off the balance sheet by making Debenhams Ireland co-guarantors in a £200 million debt taken out by Debenhams UK. This is just an accountancy manoeuvre deliberately designed to lay the ground for the liquidation, leaving the workers with nothing.

Quite rightly, the workers have not accepted this. There is no doubt Debenhams hoped workers would be shell-shocked and demoralised and in the context of the pandemic that they would just take this lying down. To their eternal credit, this inspiring group of workers, mostly women, have stood up, fought for their rights and refused to be treated in this despicable way. They are now in their 104th day of protest and at Henry Street and other stores round-the-clock pickets are being mounted to prevent the liquidators, KPMG, from moving in and taking those assets when those assets should be liquidated to the benefit of the workers.

The Taoiseach said he had great sympathy for the workers. When I and others raised this in the past number of weeks, he told us he was greatly sympathetic and the treatment of Debenhams workers was disgraceful. He said he would look at legislation going forward but there was nothing he could really do. That was the implication for this particular group of workers. In this motion we are making a concrete proposal that can be achieved. It is something that arose from a meeting of the workers and the liquidator, when it became clear the Government is a priority shareholder. Therefore, the Government can waive its priority and instruct KPMG to give a better redundancy deal to the workers in the form of the four weeks of pay per year of service and ensure they are the top priority in the liquidation of assets.

The workers do not want tea and sympathy but tangible action to give them the justice they deserve. We also want the legislation to ensure similar cases do not arise in future with similar groups of workers. The workers are marching here later this evening because they were not aware of the change in the Dáil schedule. If we want to send a message of solidarity and hope to those workers, the Government should accept this motion and drop its amendments, which other speakers will address.

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