Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Deputies who tabled this Private Members' motion this evening. We were in the House earlier today talking about taxi drivers. Many of the partners, husbands and wives of the Debenhams workers are taxi drivers so they will not be rushing down to the bank to take out loans to go on holidays when the Government lifts the travel restrictions. The Duffy Cahill report has been mentioned already. When there were emergencies in this country in the past, including the bank bailout, the Government was quick enough to introduce emergency legislation. We are talking about real lives and real people here. The Debenhams workers have been let down. When one goes to work, one provides a service. One expects that when one gives goodness, one will get goodness back but this company has crapped them. That is as polite as I can be. I have been dealing with the workers in my office, as have my two Sinn Féin colleagues from Cork and the families are broken. I am not just talking about families close to the city where the Debenhams stores are located. The workers are well spread out and they are absolutely broken. We have a Taoiseach from Cork at the moment. Everyone from Cork is praising him but he cannot even look after his own in Cork.

Sometimes we come in here and score political points and throw insults across the floor but what we should be doing here is punishing the people who are crapping on our own. These are our own people, our own citizens who were working and paying tax into the Exchequer. What are we doing? We are giving them a pat on the back. A pat on the back is a foot and a half from a kick in the backside. That is what I was always told. It does not wear well with people when they cannot put food on the table. They are stressed out of their heads. We have problems at the moment with public transport and school buses, not to mention people who cannot get to work and who are trying to get their children to school. The taxi industry is probably tied into this. Nothing is working for them. All they want is fairness and respect. Even if the Government stood up and had a fight with Debenhams and the liquidators and said "No, we are not taking this; this is our country, these are our rules and these are our people and we are going to stand up for them" then some credit could be garnered from this. It is so disheartening to come in here, 160 days later, when a Debenhams worker is in Cork on a 12-hour fast. It is getting serious and I am appealing to the Government to support this motion, support the Debenhams workers and give them the respect they should have garnered when they got up early every morning to go to work, to earn a few bob, to send the gag to school, to pay their mortgage, pay for their car and so on. All of a sudden, that has been taken away from them and all we have is excuses from the Government. It claims that we cannot do this or that but we are supposed to be the legislators. We are supposed to be the people who write the rules. How many times have I come into this House and said that we were trying to fix something that was not broken? Today the system is broken and we should be putting it right. I cannot overstate the social and mental impact of this and the anguish that has been caused. The bravery of the workers and their families who are supporting them must be commended. If there is anything the Government can do in terms of doing the right thing and standing by the workers, standing by our own people, it should do it.

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