Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the Arcadia group of companies went into liquidation, with 900 jobs on the line. Clearly, a retail jobs massacre is under way in this country. I believe that the Government should intervene to save jobs. If it does not, Mandate, the shop workers' union, needs to consider a one-day national strike to put pressure on the Government on this issue.

There is also a broader issue in society. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, where we heard from representatives of banking workers that 6,000 jobs in the banking sector are potentially on the line. There should be, and could be, a debate and a discussion in the trade union movement in this country at Irish Congress of Trade Unions level about a one-day national strike of all workers to put pressure on the Government on the issues of jobs and workers' rights.

There is also the question of decent redundancy. There must be no more workers cheated out of their redundancy rights in the way that there has been an attempt to so do with the Debenhams workers. The programme for Government states that it will aim to improve workers' rights in respect of liquidations. The Taoiseach gave me an update on that recently but there is fresh urgency with the latest round of redundancies and I am looking for an update on the position.

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