Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am looking at a letter that was sent to the Minister of State from Patricia King and is dated 31 August. It is addressed to the Minister of State with responsibility for business, employment and retail and to the Department of employment and enterprise. Are we not terribly lucky in that we would have had two Ministers to choose from? I fully respect that the schedule was changed but neither senior Minister is now available. That sends a very clear message to the Debenhams workers in particular. I do not mean that disrespectfully to the Minister of State and I am sure he will not take it like that. It is very instructive of the attitude this Government has to workers and workers' rights that neither senior Minister, when it could have been either of them, could make themselves available. We are all busy and sometimes in politics as in life it is about priorities. They have not prioritised the Debenhams workers.

I looked at the legislative programme. It does not prioritise workers' rights. There is nothing in it to prevent tactical insolvencies, nothing about a statutory pay scheme although we are in the middle of a global pandemic, nothing about strengthening workers' rights to organise and nothing about making Covid-19 a notifiable disease. There is nothing at all, actually, that would speak to workers. This absence speaks volumes as far as the workers are concerned. They see it and they know it. They know exactly what is going on. It is exactly the same as when the man who is now Tánaiste was running for the leadership of Fine Gael and tried to run on a platform of implementing a good old-fashioned Thatcherite strike ban, which is exactly what it was. That might appeal to Fine Gael's base but it does not go down well with workers at all. They see Fine Gael and they know the attitude that it has.

The programme for Government, which was published on 15 June, includes a commitment to "Review whether the legal provisions surrounding collective redundancies and the liquidation of companies effectively protect the rights of workers." That was 93 days ago. I just saw a tweet from Mandate outlining this.

The Government has had 93 days.

The Minister of State might use his concluding remarks to advise the House exactly what stage that review is at. I could save the Minister of State a lot of trouble, I could save his Department staff an awful lot of trouble, and indeed I could save a lot of headaches for the two Ministers with responsibility. The provisions do not protect the rights of workers. The legal provisions do not protect the rights of workers. The Mandate workers would not be in dispute if the legal provisions existed to protect their rights and their collective agreement. Those workers are on the streets because the legal provisions do not exist. Patricia King is writing to the Government because the legal provisions do not exist. The general secretary of Mandate is also writing to the Government because the legal provisions do not exist. That is the review done.

The Government has had 93 days and nothing has been done on this. Nothing has been done that is of any use to those workers. I pay tribute to them; of course I do. I have stood with them. I have nothing but admiration for their determination. It is very important that we do not lose sight of this: while they are fighting for a redundancy claim at the end of this, there will be no job for them. They will be jobless. They will be unemployed as we head into a period of sustained high unemployment. These men and women have given decades of loyal service to their employer under a collective agreement, and I have negotiated plenty of them, which anyone would know always involves a bit of give and take. Around the negotiating table the workers would have something to give and something they wanted from the employer, which goes into the collective agreement. This employer, however, has walked away and the Government has said that is grand, it cannot do anything about it, and when the Opposition raises the issue in the Dáil the Government says it is not that simple, that it is actually quite complicated. The Government has had 93 days to get it done since it put the matter into its programme for Government. Nothing has been done for the workers. They hear the message very clearly. They are sick of the tea and sympathy. They want some action.

The general secretary of congress has written to the Government outlining what she believes is a solution. It is echoed in the motion, and I commend the Deputies on bringing the motion forward today. The question is actually a very simple one, much and all as the Minister of State wishes it to be complicated. It is a very simple question: what has the Government done for the past 93 days in bringing this forward and reviewing it? Will the Minister of State show us where the protections are? If the protections exist, those workers will want to see them. They want to invoke those protections. It is very simple. It is about which side one is on. It is about who the Minister of State comes in here to protect and what he prioritises. I put it to the Minister of State that the Debenhams workers and every other worker in the State sees very clearly whose side he is on and they see very clearly who he comes in here to protect. We will not stand for that and they will not stand for that. The time is right now for action on this. The Minister of State cannot say that he will work with us over the coming months. That is not fair.

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