Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

First, my only interest is to see 1,000 Debenhams workers, who have gone through an extraordinary struggle and have been treated despicably, get the justice and fair redundancy they deserve. It is similar for the Arcadia Group's workers, another group of workers faced with the same situation because of the failure of this and successive Governments to address this abuse.

I put to the Taoiseach a concrete example. The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, which was bailed out by the people, put a €5.5 million fund of enhanced redundancy in place out of its assets so the workers who earned less than €120,000 could get enhanced redundancy. This was despite claims at the time by the Government, similar to this Government's claims, that it could not be done. The former Minister, Michael Noonan, said it could not be done, but it was done. It was done by the same liquidator that is telling Debenhams workers it cannot do it. The Taoiseach must answer that. Why cannot the Government, in the particular context of Covid but also more generally, impose a levy on employers, such as a Covid levy or solidarity levy, to provide enhanced redundancy? By the way, the Debenhams workers paid for their redundancy. They paid €1 million per year for 20 or 30 years. They paid for it and they are owed that redundancy by the State.

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