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

Without a shadow of a doubt, the most high-profile redundancy that took place during the Covid-19 period, to which this Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill is a response, was the Debenhams redundancy. Why does this Bill not involve trying to do something to compensate the Debenhams workers for the failure and inadequacy of legislation to protect against the sort of strategic liquidation that Debenhams engaged in with devastating consequences for the Debenhams workers?

I met with the Debenhams workers yesterday and it was interesting just to refresh my own memory of the circumstances. Where is the Government's response to what happened to them? Where is the change in the law on redundancy to prevent that kind of strategic liquidation where workers are denied the redundancy entitlements they should get? Of course, the Minister of State will know and recall that the workers had an agreement that they would receive two weeks' statutory pay plus two weeks' salary for each year of service. They did not get that. They fought an incredible battle for more than a year on the picket lines. As they reminded me yesterday, some of the women had never been on a picket line in their lives. For more than a year, from early morning until late at night, sometimes literally around the clock, in a loading bay at the back of the Ilac Centre in the case of the Henry Street branch and at Debenhams stores across the country, more than 1,000 women were forced to engage in that action because of the law. I have some questions in that regard, as do the workers.

As I and the workers understand it, when someone is made redundant there is supposed to be a staged process of notice, which I think runs for a period of between 30 and 90 days, depending on the particular situation. None of this happened in the case of Debenhams. In early April 2020, the workers received an email from the CEO of Debenhams in which he informed them that they should ignore media speculation about possible redundancies, they should not worry, there was no problem and their jobs were safe. One week later, the same CEO sent an email telling the workers their jobs were gone. They never heard from the company again.

The workers have a question. It is not an allegation; they want clarification on the facts. As they understand it, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has to be notified about such large collective redundancies. I know the Minister of State may not be able to answer the question now, but the workers would like an answer as to when, during that period, the Department was first notified of the redundancies and what the response of the Government was. They would very much appreciate a response to that question and I think they are owed it. Furthermore, how was it that Debenhams could do that when there was a statutory process around it, which seemed to be utterly disregarded?

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