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

I am because it is a redundancy payments Bill. It relates to Covid redundancies. The Debenhams redundancy was a Covid redundancy, where people lost their jobs in the middle of the emergency. The workers lost everything. They did not get any of their entitlements. I am asking whether this Bill addresses that. That is the question. Does the Bill address it? If not, why not? I think the Minister of State needs to understand what happened and needs to tell us what he knows because we cannot prevent this from happening again unless we get answers these questions. That must be done so that there is a legislative response and we have an opportunity to table amendments on the next Stage that could address the deficiencies - if there are such, and it would seem to me that there are - in respect of what happened in the Debenhams case.

The other question is how, in this circumstance, could a company that goes into liquidation then move €50 million out of the Debenhams online business, Debenhams.ie, which is clearly part of the Debenhams consortium and which is directly linked to the stores and so on? What is it about the law that would allow that to happen? How can that happen? What are we going to do to stop it happening, so that the just redundancy entitlement that the workers should have is not stolen from them, through what are essentially accountancy tricks, by the company moving assets that should be available for the redundancy payment?

What are we going to do about the fact the Debenhams consortium was able to load the Irish company with a whole series of debts that it did not have and which properly belonged to the British company? It loaded those debts on to further remove, as it were, assets that might have been available to pay the redundancy for the workers. These sorts of loopholes can be exploited and there is a sharp practice that follows from it from companies in order to avoid paying workers their just entitlement. It should be noted that all that value that Debenhams.iebuilt up and all those assets were essentially assets that were created through the labour, hard work and decency of good workers who were loved by the customers of Debenhams. All of that goodwill that Debenhams had, and which gave it its value, was robbed from the workers through accountancy tricks. What are we doing to prevent that happening so that workers get their just redundancy and the State and the taxpayer are not on the hook for the sharp practice of companies engaging in what clearly looks like and is, in my view and that of the workers, a strategic liquidation?

The workers have issued an invitation to the Minister of State. They are making a documentary about this historic struggle of women workers, which has inspired workers the length and breadth of the country in their determination to fight the injustice they face. They are asking that the Minister of State participate in the documentary they are making. Perhaps he will consider that. The workers will probably send him a written invitation to participate.

Everybody at the time, including the Government and the Opposition, accepted that a great wrong had been done. The case that was always made by the Government was that its hands were tied because the law is the law. What we are going to do to ensure this never happens again and that workers robbed of their redundancy entitlements will have them guaranteed? What we are going to do to ensure we have the laws in place to prevent the absolutely appalling and disgusting behaviour that Debenhams engaged in from ever happening again? I am keen to hear the Minister of State's response to those points, as are, more importantly, the Debenhams workers.

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