Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has expressed sympathy with employees who are out of a job and talked about how difficult it is for them. He has talked about drawing parallels or saying that the Clerys situation is the same as this one. I ask him to read the motion because nowhere have we asked for sympathy. I thank my colleague, Deputy Joan Collins, for tabling the motion, and I acknowledge the work to date of Solidarity-People Before Profit and Sinn Féin in raising this matter. If one reads this motion, one sees no reference to Clerys. It points to a report that was carried out four years and six months ago, which I will come back to. It is a little disingenuous of the Minister of State to talk about us on this side of the House making simplistic comparisons. The question for the Minister of State is why he has not acted on the Duffy-Cahill report four years and six months later.

I acknowledge the workers who are out in Galway today, trying to prevent the disposal of the one asset that is left, which was valued at approximately €20 million, on Eyre Street. I am not sure what it is valued at now. They have been out for over 162 days and I have proudly stood with them, which was the least I could do. The least the Minister of State might do is stand up here today and tell us why the Duffy-Cahill report has not been implemented. Let us look at page 45 of the report. The six modest proposals in the report "taken together aim to ensure that employees are treated with dignity". Can the Minister of State imagine that? The six proposals arising from this report tell us that employees should be treated with dignity. The report proposes that "if collective redundancies are to occur", there should be "an opportunity for employees to engage and be consulted". Can the Minister of State imagine something as basic as engaging and being consulted?

I will come back to the reference in the report to being "armed with the leverage of a threat of statutory applications to recover assets". The report merely hopes that "If effectively enforced, the proposed increased sanctions for failing to respect the rights of employees [would] deter conduct of the type identified".

I remind the House that the Duffy Cahill report was commissioned in January 2016 by a Minister and a Minister of State who are still Members of this House. At the time, Deputy Bruton was Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation while Deputy Nash was Minister of State with responsibility for business and employment. They commissioned the report and it was done very quickly. It came back in March 2016, which was very good. The terms of reference were extremely restrictive but notwithstanding that, it came up with six recommendations which, as I said already, are very modest. The recommendations are in respect of consultation, obligation to notify, sanctions for failure to consult, a mechanism for the recovery of assets, the use of an injunction and a mechanism to ensure payments of enhanced redundancy. I think they had a twin-track approach, looking at the existing legislation to see if it could be used better and also looking at amendments to employment legislation.

It jumped out at me and, I am sure, at everyone who read it that in respect of existing legislation the report found the Companies Act 2014 needs not amendment but more use: "It is striking that many of the provisions of the Companies Act which may be of assistance are not frequently invoked (such as section 608) or are not invoked at all (such as section 599)." The report tells us that among the reasons for that are the cost implications and there is a specific recommendation that the Minister might be able to do something there and as to what he might do. The Minister of State stands here today and not once has he addressed why there has been a failure to implement those six recommendations. It is a matter of legislation that already exists but is under-used or not used at all, in addition to very basic amendments to ensure employees can be treated with dignity and have a minimum of consultation.

The Minister of State stands here today and tells us that this is distinctly different from Clerys. The answers is that is not correct. Yes, there was certainly more than a sleight of hand but a deliberate action to separate the business into the operations section and another company so as to avoid having any assets that would have to be shared out with the employees. That is different from now but there are many other similarities. The Government's failure to act on the Duffy Cahill report is just not acceptable. I have asked before for plain and simple language. I ask the Minister of State to, please, tell us why the Government has not acted on it and when it is going to act on it. That is very simple. Are we just going to shred it, throw it in the bin and start all over again? If that is the answer, let us do that but let us stop all this double-talk and double-language. The least the Debenhams workers deserve after 162 days of standing in all sorts of weather and facing arrest by An Garda Síochána simply for drawing attention to their plight is a certain measure of honesty. None of us aspires to being a saint but plain language that we all understand is the least they deserve. If the Duffy Cahill report had been implemented there would have been a statutory entitlement to a 30-day consultation. There would have been access to various statutory measures if it had been implemented, without a doubt. There would have been a better enforcement of the enhanced redundancy payments at a minimum.

If we look at the sector we are talking about, we see that the Debenhams protestors are mostly women. The Oireachtas Library & Research Service has written a very interesting article, Anticipating the Gendered Impacts of Covid-19 It found that women disproportionately make up sectors such as retail and hospitality that were entirely shut down due to Covid and are therefore more likely to lose earnings. A study by the fiscal institute showed at the time of the lockdown that 17% of female employees were in a sector that is now shut down in comparison to 13% of male employees. The same position applies across Europe. Research by McKinsey showed that women’s jobs are 1.8 times more vulnerable to the Covid crisis than men's because of existing gender inequalities. I refer also to research from the ESRI and so on in respect of the gender pay gap. The burden of unpaid work has become more pronounced during the pandemic, negatively impacting many women’s ability to work from home and deepening existing economic inequalities. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, women make up 82% of all cashiers in the EU. While there are many other cases, the two high-profile cases of Clerys and Debenhams, to which the Duffy Cahill report is particularly relevant, relate to the retail sector in which substantially more women are employed than men. I do not ask for any different treatment for men and women but it is important to realise the gender imbalance and to realise how women have suffered disproportionately as a result of various Governments' failure to bring in proper legislation to protect all employees' rights but particularly women's rights.

I am going to finish up on the loan and indebtedness of Debenhams in England. The Irish retail outlet was used as a co-guarantor of that indebtedness, which in itself raises questions. Let us look at the entities that triggered the insolvency. We have our own Bank of Ireland, which we partly own, as well as Barclays and hedge funds from America triggering the insolvency process. One has to ask how Debenhams Ireland came to be used as a co-guarantor in respect of loans in England with all that ensued. I am simply raising that aspect for the Minister of State to look at. In my last 15 seconds I ask him to read the motion and, when he is giving his concluding few words, to tell us why the report has not been implemented and if the Government is going to shred it.

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