Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I asked the Minister of State a question and, in response, he read out a prepared script. The script dealt with many different points but did not deal with the core question I asked him, so I will use my time to go back over that.

The response he gave states that if push comes to shove, the State will pay statutory redundancy to the workers who have lost their jobs in Cork, Dungarvan and the midlands. However, I asked him not just about statutory or minimum redundancy but also what happens to the holiday pay and back pay due to these workers and what happens to the tip jars that belong to them. The workers, when they got the text message on Saturday morning, passed on by the manager, hurried down to the shops. They could not get in because the shops were shuttered and locked up. The locks had been changed. By all appearances, the places had been cleaned out. What was on the counter, including the workers' tip jar, was no longer there. Talk about cold and callous. What is the story there?

As for the key question I am asking the Minister of State, he pointed to the Social Insurance Fund, but the liquidation laws state that there are those other than the workers who are first in the queue for access to that fund and if there is not enough money in the kitty to deal with such situations, the workers will lose out on what I regard as entitlements, what should be their entitlements and what would be their entitlements if the Debenhams Bill was passed. The question I am asking the Minister of State, therefore, is when the Government will ensure that legislation or equivalent legislation is passed in order that workers can vindicate their rights in redundancies, rather than facing the situation that the Debenhams workers faced and that now threatens the workers in the Butcher's Block.

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