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

On 9 April 2020, more than 1,000 Debenhams workers received an email telling them that they had lost their jobs. The researchers who are making a film about the Debenhams dispute have just uncovered evidence which suggests very strongly that the three vulture funds, and a consortium including Bank of Ireland, had orchestrated this liquidation precisely one year before, in order to get around Irish law where that consortium, including Bank of Ireland which I want to stress, loaded €200 million of debt onto Debenhams Ireland and the Norwegian branch, which branch was later released from this debt, so that the entire debt was loaded onto Debenhams. That debt, however, could not been enforced against Debenhams Ireland unless one year had passed. Exactly one year to the day after the debt was fixed, the 1,000 workers were sacked. Involved in this was a company headed up by somebody who is an ex-KPMG employee. KPMG was later appointed by Debenhams as the liquidators.

This poses very serious questions about the orchestrated sacrifice of 1,000 jobs in Debenhams and raises questions about what the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment knew when it was notified by KPMG of the liquidation and of the tactical and cynical manipulation of, essentially, the Debenhams group to sacrifice 1,000 workers.

I have sent the Taoiseach the material because I cannot go through it all here and I ask him very seriously to look into this.

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