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

I made many of the points I wish to raise. I will briefly summarise. My significant interest in this is particularly informed by the experience of the Debenhams workers. The Minister of State is aware they went through an incredible struggle, undertaking 406 days of strike action to try to vindicate their rights. Under a collective redundancy agreement that had been agreed with Debenhams, when the company went into liquidation or they were made redundant, they were to get two weeks' statutory redundancy and two additional weeks' redundancy for each year of service. Of course, they were shafted by Debenhams in the most ruthless manner and did not get anything. The public ended up paying out because the company reneged on its commitment.

The workers set out on their protests and we had multiple debates in the House on the matter. The view of the workers has now been immortalised in a film titled "406 Days". The Minister of State should see it if he has not done so already. It has won multiple awards and will have its UK premiere this Friday. It has been shown in mainstream cinemas. Even the workers and the people who produced it were surprised it was so popular, with large numbers of people going to see it in cinemas throughout the country. It has now gone international and won international awards and so on. Many people identified with the plight of workers, who in this case, although this story has been repeated very often, gave many years of dedicated and loyal service to a company but that company absolutely betrayed the loyalty, trust and hard work those people had put into building up the brand of Debenhams and, prior to that, Roches Stores, which was purchased by Debenhams. They were absolutely gutted. First they were lied to. During Covid they were told it was a Covid-related lay-off, but they then discovered via an email that their jobs were gone and never coming back. That experience has been replicated in this country on multiple occasions but it is something with which people across the world are familiar, and that is why so many people have gone to see the film. Their determination is that should never again happen to a group of workers. They would be looking to this legislation to ensure it does not happen again.

The Duffy Cahill report, which was produced a number of years previous to this, sought to address this kind of situation and ensure that where there were collective redundancy agreements, those agreements would receive preferential creditor status in order that the workers would be at the top of the list when it came to the dispersal of the assets and would receive the redundancy payments that had been committed to them. The Bill does not do that. It does not change the position of the workers. It provides a 30-day window and gives them greater access to information relating to the financial position of the company and the process of liquidation. It gives workers the right to go to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, if the 30-day window is breached, but a company that breaches the window will be fined only €5,000. I do not see how that will inhibit a company. In the case of Debenhams, given the amount of money that was at stake, it would not have been worried about a fine of €5,000 for breaching the terms of what it is supposed to do here. If that is the penalty a company will suffer, I do not see how it will be a disincentive in any serious way.

I will remind the Minister of State what the workers and I think happened. It was a tactical liquidation. Unbeknown to the workers, Debenhams UK had taken out a €200 million loan facility from a consortium called GLAS Trust which involved US hedge funds, Bank of Ireland and Barclays Bank. It had imposed the €200 million debt on the Irish company two years before, as far as I remember. The Minister of State can check the details on this. The workers did not know about the imposition of that debt, however. They were initially told the financial position of the company was that it was €19 million in debt. They took some comfort from that because the Debenhams online business was still functioning and generating significant amounts of revenue and they knew there were assets in the company stores throughout the country that likely far exceeded the €19 million debt. They had good reason to believe there were sufficient assets available, in terms of the continuing revenue to the online businesses and the physical assets in the possession of the company, for them to get their two weeks' statutory and two weeks' additional redundancy from the assets of the company. They then discovered, however, that the financial position of the company, rather than being €19 million in debt as they were told by the liquidators, was actually €225 million in debt. The way in which that was triggered could not have been done until precisely the moment it was done. This debt facility was established one or two years previously but it could not crystallise on the company until precisely the moment it did. In other words, it was preplanned. That meant GLAS Trust, which had lent that money to Debenhams UK, became the owner of the company and got all the assets. It got all the assets and the workers were left with absolutely nothing.

The question is whether this legislation deals with that. Having talked to the Minister of State's officials, they said there are additional remedies, that the scope of it is quite wide, and that the pool of assets will be broadened. In view of this sort of premeditated tactical liquidation, as it would seem to the workers happened in this case, I would like reassurance that the Bill would guarantee, and I do not think it really is the case, that workers would get the first call on those assets rather than what were essentially vulture funds. They were vulture funds that, in what looks like a deal with Debenhams UK, loaned the money knowing quite well that after they sold off the Danish company, which was released of that burden of debt, it was all loaded on the Irish company. This was a company that was actually in a reasonably decent financial position, particularly when it took on the online business. Instead, all the debt was loaded on it. The question is whether we can prevent that from happening again, where workers do not get shafted and are at the top of the list ahead of vulture funds, which are essentially engaged in financial manipulation of the company to be able to asset-strip it? That is what actually happened.

It seems to me this does not guarantee that is the case, even if, as I understand it, and I am not the expert and the Minister of State's officials are probably far more expert on this, a person could go to court under the Companies Act 2014. Again, for workers who have nothing, have lost everything and would not have much resources, how the hell are they going to fight their way through the courts trying to work out whether there is any legal remedy for them? That would be a hugely costly process. That is not much comfort really because these companies with their lawyers and these vulture funds with all the assets and resources they have mean the chips are very heavily stacked against the workers in those circumstances.

Maybe the Minister of State has answers to all these questions. Certainly, it seems to me we need to absolutely guarantee that this sort of manipulation and asset stripping to prevent workers getting their fair redundancy, as happened in Debenhams and other situations, can simply never happen again and that the workers who contributed to all the profits those companies made over decades and to the value of the brand and so on are the ones who get first call on the assets in the company before anybody else does so they are not shafted. I am sorry to use slightly colourful language but it is very difficult to find another way to describe it. The Debenhams workers were absolutely shafted. Frankly, it would be a fitting tribute to the heroism of the Debenhams workers, who were treated so badly, that we absolutely guarantee that such a thing could never happen again.

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