Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want us to look at a few figures: 175 is the number of days that the Debenhams workers have been on strike and €175 million is the amount that was paid to KPMG to wind down Anglo-Irish Bank by the State. The value of the stock inside Debenhams is €11 million, and €11 million is what it would take to pay proper redundancy to the 1,000 workers and their families, namely the two weeks that were negotiated and bargained for. The fee that was paid to KPMG to advise the Government on the national broadband plan also happens to be €11 million, a fiasco for which the State is paying six times the cost and which we will never own. I want to bring those figures together to illustrate to everybody and particularly the leaders of the Government that what they are doing in terms of their treatment of the Debenhams workers is disgraceful and unacceptable. I walked behind what looked like an army of ordinary working class women towards the Fianna Fáil headquarters this morning, where they were protesting. I was telling them how shameful it looked for the State to be overseeing the 175 days of their struggle without getting justice, and said to them "you are just ordinary women." They said no, and that they have become extraordinary people. I read the article in The Irish Timesdescribing how Jane Crowe, the chief shop steward, sat in a cell having been arrested after occupying Henry Street, with a bed and a hole in the floor for a toilet. She wondered how it had come to this. I am asking the Minister how it has come to this.

The State has no end of largesse when coughing out to companies like KPMG for failures, indeed, as KPMG was supposed to have overseen the accounts of Anglo and Irish Nationwide. It failed to alert us before the bank bailout that there was a problem. Why is it that the State has no end of largesse to treat those big conglomerates in this way but cannot hold up its hands and say it failed to implement the terms of Duffy-Cahill? It has failed to give those workers a mechanism whereby they could receive justice and should admit that the hard-won rights that they fought for having given years and years of service are being thrown back at them. It is five days now that the workers in Waterford are occupying their store. Last night an official from KPMG walked in and more or less asked them what it would take to settle this. They said it would take negotiating with them and KPMG said no way. The State is the best customer of KPMG. Here is the way to settle it. The Government should tell KPMG to sit down and negotiate and that the State, regarding its ability to collect the insolvency money, will take one step sideways and allow the workers to have first preference as a creditor. That is what should have happened under Duffy-Cahill but the State failed to legislate. The Minister is now part of the Government. How can he sit there and say it is not possible to look after 1,000 workers and their families while it is possible to throw the largesse of the State at the big conglomerates? Which side is he on?

See this speech in context