Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Today at 6.15 a.m., ex-workers from Debenhams stores at Mahon Point, St. Patrick's Street and Tralee occupied the St. Patrick's Street store in Cork city. At 7 a.m., workers and supporters occupied the store at Henry Street, Dublin. As the news broke on "Morning Ireland", I have no doubt but that working people across the country will have silently cheered. Everybody knows by now that this dispute is a litmus test for how workers' rights fare in this pandemic. The workers sitting in were stepping up their campaign for four weeks' redundancy pay per year of service. It is a just campaign.

They were firmly rejecting the insulting offer made to them by KPMG last week, an offer which amounted to the statutory minimum plus one day's pay per year of service. In a company in which most workers worked part-time, the KPMG offer equalled €615 for one part-time worker with 18 years of service and €137 for another part-time worker with six years of service. These are sums of money less than one-tenth of what they would have received under their old deal with Debenhams.

There is a long-standing and proud tradition in this country of worker sit-ins. In Cork, we remember the Vita Cortex workers. Scandalously, people who were sitting in this morning on Henry Street, including shop steward Jane Crowe and workers Doreen Keegan and Seán Powney, were arrested, removed from the store and charged on suspicion of trespass. These workers are not the criminals, they are the victims of a multinational company, which has robbed them of a decent redundancy, engaging in a tactical liquidation while hoarding £95 million in the bank.

The Government has been in power for more than two months. The Taoiseach himself met a delegation of Debenhams workers at Government Buildings. Valerie Conlon was part of that delegation and she is leading the St. Patrick's Street sit-in today. The Taoiseach has stood on the St. Patrick's Street picket line for photographs with these workers. The Taoiseach cannot tell me that he was unaware of the insulting offer that was made to these workers. His own backbench Deputies were telling workers the broad outlines of that deal days before the offer was made. The Taoiseach speaks of these workers having suffered shoddy treatment. Some of the parties that have treated the workers shoddily include the Taoiseach himself, his party and his Government, by standing by and allowing such an insulting offer to be put before them in the first place. How could the Taoiseach be so out of touch that he would think that an offer of €1 million would end a dispute over the need to increase redundancy payments by €10 million? The workers feel they have been badly let down by the Taoiseach. They feel that the KPMG offer, which was withdrawn this morning, must be replaced by an improved offer of four weeks' redundancy per year of service.

I asked the workers sitting in on St. Patrick's Street for a comment that I might read to the Taoiseach at the end of my contribution. They sent me the following comment: "Remember golfgate". It is time to play ball with the Debenhams workers.

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