Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In fairness, we support this legislation, which is clearly necessary. It addresses a shortfall that Deputy Louise O'Reilly would have pointed out at a very early stage. There is support for this right across the House because it does not make sense that there should be a scenario where workers would lose out on reckonable time relating to redundancy on the basis of being on the pandemic unemployment payment for a time. All the supports provided by the State to workers and businesses were about ensuring we could keep the show on the road for society and businesses. It was about ensuring workers and their families would be okay during the pandemic and everyone would be able to do the right thing during the period of restrictions.

This is literally us following up on one of those gaps that have appeared between stools. It is necessary work that needs to happen. Obviously, there will be a Covid-19 payment from the Social Insurance Fund just to ensure there is no shortfall. We all accept that. We all accept that there are significant shortfalls across the board in the context of redundancy as a whole.

Recently, 100 workers have been made redundant from National Pen in Dundalk. There have also been redundancies at Hilton Food in Drogheda. I am going to speak about National Pen because the Tánaiste has stated that a generous package will be given to workers. I have spoken to some of the workers at this company. Negotiations, or at least meetings on negotiations, have started, but no timeline in respect of the redundancies has been provided. We know it is approximately a year, but we do not know exactly what the timeline is for specific workers. We are not entirely sure what package is being proposed. The Tánaiste stated that he is not sure about it. I know there cannot be direct engagement but there has not been a good history in the context of National Pen. Its communications with its workers were absolutely dreadful. This is something we will all have to keep an eye on. Beyond that, once again we are talking about a non-unionised workforce. We really have to get to grips with the right to collective bargaining because, otherwise, we will have more of these situations.

If I had more time, I would address the need to consider the issues relating to insurance. I have spoken before on that matter. There is also the issue of the regional skills forum. We have a wider piece of work to do in respect of lifelong learning, retraining and such.

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