Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Tánaiste will be aware, we have Debenhams workers outside shops while inside shops we have Arcadia Group workers who face the exact same situation in January. These workers received a WhatsApp message from the Arcadia Group that was directed to British workers. They did not receive a message addressed to them.

Like the Debenhams workers, they have an agreement for a four-week redundancy payment scheme and have been told this will not be honoured. They have six weeks of trading ahead and tens of millions of euro will be collected by the Arcadia Group and yet the workers have already been told they will only get the statutory redundancy.

Today, we learned that Debenhams was sold to a vulture group for €600 million, and yet it collected €1.2 billion in profit before closing down and leaving the workers with nothing. The system we have at the moment is being cheerleaded by the Government, which is unfortunate.

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