Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Five years ago, after Clerys left its workers high and dry, the Duffy Cahill report proposed a series of measures to prevent such an occurrence from being repeated. Five years of delay meant the Debenhams workers were left without legal protection when their company did the same to them. The promise was always that the Government would eventually take action.

Last week, the Government announced what it would do about the key recommendations of the Duffy Cahill report, namely, absolutely nothing. The key demand of workers from Clerys, Debenhams and elsewhere - that their collective redundancy agreements would be honoured in a liquidation process - has been rejected by the Ministers of State, Deputies Robert Troy and Damien English. The Duffy Cahill report recommended that companies that failed to provide proper consultation before liquidation should face serious sanctions of up to two years' of pay but the Ministers of State, Deputies Troy and English, want to overrule that recommendation and continue with a greatly reduced four-week sanction, which amounts to a mere slap on the wrist. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions called for Labour Court awards to be given preference in winding up and that has also been rejected, as has the proposal that directors of companies who break workers' rights be restricted from simply moving on to other company directorships.

How can the Taoiseach stand over this whitewash of the report from his Ministers of State? Instead of pushing through with this betrayal of workers from Clerys and Debenhams, will he intervene now to ensure the Duffy Cahill proposals are implemented in full to protect workers?

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