Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As we all know with regard to Clerys, there was a substantial and valuable property asset on O'Connell Street that was structured as a separate legal entity to that of the failing retail operations business. The Deputies are, by intimation, making an incorrect comparison between the liquidation of Debenhams, where there is actually no evidence of significant assets still being owned by that company or by a related company, and that of Clerys department store, where an asset was known to exist but shown to be out of reach of the workers for the purposes of redundancy payments. They are different scenarios but that is not always portrayed in debates.

The Clerys workers, in the end, received a discretionary goodwill payment from the owners of the property asset, in addition to their State-paid statutory redundancy, but I am unaware of any prospects of a similar payment that could be made in the case of Debenhams and certainly not one that I as a Minister of State can facilitate. Other Members have a different view on that and I am happy to take any information they have into that discussion.

In the case of Debenhams, there is no reason to believe the company is in a financial position to pay the workers the collectively bargained "four weeks per year of service" enhanced redundancy package that their trade unions achieved in the past. According to reports, it does not seem possible at this point for the liquidator to pay them the statutory minimum amount. If Deputies have different evidence, we will certainly look at it.

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