Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State's response to our motion and the Government's amendment to it are an insult. The amendment is an insult to the workers who have been taking action for 104 days. What the Minister of State has offered is more tea, sympathy, crocodile tears and generalities about what the Government is going to do for workers in the future and what it is going to do in terms of legislation. There is nothing - not a word - about what it is going to do for the workers who are facing this crisis right now, as set out in our motion that supports them. The Minister of State said one thing that I agreed with, which is that these workers really feel let down. That is correct, but they feel let down not only by the company but also by the Government.

The Government's hypocrisy in this matter is utterly sickening. I participated in a Zoom call with the Taoiseach, before he assumed office, and some of the Debenhams workers six or eight weeks ago. I stood in front of Leinster House with Debenhams workers when they met with the Taoiseach, before he was Taoiseach. Just like on that Zoom call, he nodded knowingly and sympathetically and said he appreciated their circumstances and would do what he could to help them. I was on a protest and picket line last Saturday with a Fianna Fáil Deputy who was presumably there to support the workers. Now, however, when the Government is being asked to do something to support them, it is not willing to do anything. Nothing whatsoever is being offered, only a continuation of the empty crocodile tears, tea and sympathy. The hypocritical behaviour of Government party Members pretending to support those workers when in opposition, as we saw with the Taoiseach before he took office, compared with their behaviour now they are in government is utterly disgusting. They are saying now that there is nothing they can do and, in so doing, they are implicitly and in effect backing the company. It is a disgrace.

The Minister of State said that such situations are a matter between the employer and the employee in the first instance. For how long does the first instance go on in this case? When the workers have been out for 15 weeks, are we not beyond the first instance? Are we not into a situation where the State must act to avoid workers being treated in this scandalous way and to avoid a green light being given to every other company in the country to do exactly the same? Will the Government continue to sit on its hands and allow workers to be treated in this way?

I was in the Dáil Chamber on Tuesday when another issue was raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett, in response to which the Taoiseach was at pains to say that the Deputy was always saying the Government is about businesses. His Government is not about the businesses, the Taoiseach told us, but about the workers. He really emphasised that. This evening, however, when the Government has a very simple chance to do something for a group of workers who are being treated abysmally by their employer, it is not going to do anything about it. I say the Government is not about the workers. It is about big businesses and facilitating legislation that allows big businesses to get away with murder.

The truth is that the law is allowing Debenhams to proceed with what is clearly a tactical insolvency. The company is abusing the laws that exist in this country to load the debt of the overall operation onto Debenhams in Ireland and then walk away. The assets are effectively going to the British operation while the debts sit with the Irish side, meaning the workers, in effect, get nothing from the company. At the same time, the Minister of State tells us he is preparing, in the autumn, to cut the pandemic unemployment payment of these workers, for whom he says he can do nothing, from €350 to €300. If the Government gets away with that, it will cut the payment to €250 and, after that, it will be down to jobseeker's benefit and means testing. That is the attitude of this Government to workers.

What is happening in this case demonstrates a lot about the nature of the establishment political parties and who they represent, which is big business and the 1%. It demonstrates a lot, as Deputy Barry has explained well, about the real character of corporations and how all the talk about multiple stakeholders and caring about society is nonsense. These companies care only about their profits and they are willing to throw their own workers, who have been loyal to them for decades, onto the scrapheap to maximise those profits. What is happening also says a lot about the State machinery in this country. The recommendations of the Duffy Cahill report were not implemented and these companies are legally able to operate in this way because the State machinery also operates in the interests of the 1% of big business and big corporations in this country. To me, it makes a general point about the need to end this sort of State machinery, to have a State machinery that operates in the interests of ordinary workers, to have an economy that is owned and controlled by ordinary workers and to put people's needs first so that these sorts of behaviours do not happen over and over again, as is, unfortunately, likely to happen in the coming weeks, months and years as the economic crisis deepens.

One very important thing stands between Debenhams, the Government, the State machinery and what they all want to achieve, which is for the workers to go away, do nothing about the abysmal way they have been treated and accept their fate. Standing in the way of this are the heroic workers who have taken action, who sit on 24-hour pickets in Tallaght, Cork, on Henry Street and all around the country to stop the stock being taken out. This is a fight for all workers. The picket lines at Debenhams shops throughout the country are the front line of a struggle about who is going to pay for the coronavirus and who is going to pay for the economic crisis that is coming. Are companies, the Government and the State machinery going to succeed in loading that cost onto workers and making those workers pay or will the Debenhams workers succeed in forcing the company and the State machinery, at the very least, to pay something towards their redundancy? If there was any justice in the world, this would be a battle to ensure the company is taken into public ownership and that the jobs continue because they are needed for society.

I have confidence in the power of the workers to achieve that.

The workers are creating history through the action they are taking. If they score an important albeit partial victory, and I think they can, it will be a reference point in the months and years to come. When H&M workers or other retail workers are faced by a company taking similar action or by a jobs massacre, which is what is coming, they will ask each other whether they remember what happened in the case of the Debenhams workers. They stood up together, they fought and they won something. Bob Crow, the former leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in Britain, who tragically died, said that if a person does not fight, he or she cannot win. If a person fights, he or she has at least a chance of winning. That is currently being demonstrated by the Debenhams workers.

Workers generally, trade unionists and those on the left - those who truly support these workers rather than pretending to support them as is done by Fianna Fáil and others - need to be mobilised to join the picket lines to defend the stock and prevent the liquidators from removing it. A victory for the Debenhams workers will be a victory for all workers. However, a defeat for them would be a defeat for all workers. We need to redouble our efforts and the pressure we are exerting.

It is clear that the Government will vote down the motion tomorrow. That is fine. The workers have seen it all before. They have seen the behaviour of the Government and they will not be demoralised by it. We need to continue to build the pressure, to put it up to the liquidators, the State and Debenhams and ask them whether they will try to get the stock past workers' pickets. To achieve that, we need to establish a broad support group involving other trade unionists and left organisations. The workers will have the final say on what happens in the context of the conduct of their strike, but involving those different groups would facilitate having the maximum number of people on the picket lines and build towards a substantial demonstration to show the broad public support that exists.

The Government can use and abuse its majority in the House, as it did in the context of the Committee on Standing Orders and Dáil Reform earlier, but can it defeat the workers? Can it force the stock through a line of militant workers and their supporters who refuse to accept that being done? This is the front line. It is a question of who will pay. The Debenhams workers are leading the way. I salute them for saying that workers should not pay for the coronavirus and economic crisis. Rather, we should make the companies pay.

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