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

The Deputy is absolutely right. Many of these workers live in my constituency and have been in contact with me already. There are 500 of them across the country. The first objective will be to save as many jobs as we possibly can save. The second will be to ensure that their rights and entitlements are guaranteed but with support and solidarity must come honesty. That means saying that, as people would understand, legal rights and entitlements are set out in law. A collective agreement is contingent on the ability of the employer to pay. I have often said previously that I believe the Debenhams workers were very badly treated by their employer, in the way they were laid off in particular, but they were also badly treated by some people who took up their cause. I do not mean their trade union. I mean political forces that led them to believe that there is a big pot of money somewhere here in Ireland or in the UK to which they can get access. We know now from the independent report of the chairman of the Labour Court, which came out this week, that that was not the case. Some months ago there was a deal on the table - two weeks redundancy per year of service, an extra €1 million and some of the stores, and the jobs, being saved - and that opportunity was lost. That is a real shame. I hope that when the Arcadia workers see some of those people riding over the hill coming to help them that they run them because they did not help them. The best thing they can do is to take the advice of their trade union leadership, and the Government will do everything we can to help them.

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