Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Retail is changing. It is simplistic to put these things down to matters of company law or which fund bought what business. The truth is that retail is changing. People have moved online. Last week in Ireland, more money was spent online than physically. As a result, retail is going to transform before our eyes. It was happening anyway. There was inevitability that we would see more people shopping online. That means the number of people who work in high street stores will fall. No ideology or political party will change that reality. It has been happening before our eyes for many years now and has been accelerated by the pandemic. This is happening regardless of the ownership structure of companies.

Under our law, if made redundant, people have a statutory right, a legal entitlement, to two weeks per year of service, up to a certain limit. Anything agreed beyond that can only be honoured if the money is there to fund it. I cannot say in this situation whether the money will be there to fund it but, generally, when a company goes bust, it leaves many debts and many people are owed money. In most cases, people only get a proportion of what they are owed.

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