Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the question. We had a good committee discussion on this recently and the Deputy might have had a chance to review the transcript of that. The Government has committed in the programme for Government to review whether the current legal provisions surrounding collective redundancies and the liquidation of companies effectively protect the rights of workers. It is in the programme for Government and, in the first meeting the Tánaiste and I had with Mandate and the former workers of Debenhams, we committed to doing this review. They had two issues in their campaign. One was to see if the legislation could be strengthened for anyone in future situations; the other was to pursue their former company for their ex gratia payments.

The responsibility for employment rights, redundancy and insolvency recently transferred to my Department from the Department of Social Protection. The recommendations made in the Cahill Duffy report are being revisited as part of that review. The Tánaiste, the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, and I are involved in this because it impacts on company legislation as well as employment legislation. We have asked the Company Law Review Group to look again at the aspects of company law in this area and that group is due to report back to us before the end of the month. We have jointly met with employer and union representative bodies in November to continue a discussion on the various legislative provisions that deal with redundancy and insolvency from both a company law and an employment law perspective. There has been engagement and toing and froing around recommendations and suggestions in that conversation. Included in that is the Cahill Duffy report and the recommendations in that. There have been positive and constructive engagement and meetings with the stakeholders, where the discussion focused on identifying whether there are gaps or weaknesses in either body of legislation. Following this meeting, the Department has continued to engage with the employer and union groups to help advance our review of the legislative protection under company and employment law for workers in the context of insolvency and redundancy generally.

We are clear on this as a Department and a Government. If this process identifies areas where we can strengthen the position and make the law more effective, we will do that. The committee the Deputy is involved in does similar work and the chair has undertaken a review of the Cahill Duffy report. Naturally, we took part in the committee proceedings and I made a commitment that we would engage with the committee again when it was appropriate during January to review suggestions and recommendations.

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