Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I appreciate the fact the Act will come into law this week and it will be important. There are real concerns that once the employer support schemes introduced during the pandemic end there may be many business closures throughout the State. Everyone has this concern. Unfortunately, in many cases employees will be made redundant when businesses collapse. Would it not be more prudent to have the recommendations in the Cahill Duffy report implemented in advance of this possibility? I do not think the Minister has done enough on this one. Such a step could protect workers who will face similar shutdowns as those experienced by the then workers at Clerys and as we saw in Debenhams recently. We witnessed how disgracefully the former workers at Debenhams were treated last year without the report recommendations being implemented. We witnessed how they had to camp outside their former places of employment in an effort to ensure the assets of the company were not transferred out of the State. It is five years since the report was published. I do not believe there has been a serious attempt by the Government to implement the recommendations of the report in full.

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