Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill, which has been a long time in preparation. As somebody from Waterford who has witnessed the effect of the liquidations of TalkTalk, Debenhams and, most recently, Iceland, I can honestly say the loss of employment is a significant hurt. The denial of agreed redundancy payments becomes a toxic burden for workers to handle because, in my opinion, it shows their employers see little of future value or commercial value in them. It is this sense of injustice that forced workers in all of these companies to vehemently protest the treatment they were receiving. In the case of Debenhams, this resulted in a strike exceeding 400 days' duration, where workers did their utmost to prevent the movement of stock in the hope that its sale could realise some of their promised benefits.

It is a fact that companies do and can engage in strategic and tactical liquidation. In the case of Debenhams, and Clerys before it, one could question how UK companies could put assets beyond the reach of workers yet, at the same time, still get full access to their Irish market profits without any legal encumbrance pre-liquidation. It is also a fact that the legal procedures around tactical bankruptcies and asset stripping are often largely completed before workers' rights can be vindicated or enforced.

As a member of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, our grouping did a significant examination of the proposals of this Bill and we made several recommendations. I welcome the formation of the plan of action, which has been welcomed by the social partners and informed by the work of the Company Law Review Group, a group made up of a wide range of stakeholders, including business associations, trade unions, legal practitioners and, most importantly, insolvency experts. Importantly, I welcome the Department's engagement with Restructuring and Insolvency Ireland, which represents insolvency practitioners across the country. This is the type of stakeholder involvement needed to deliver better legislation.

There are significant and obvious additional benefits to employee rights within this Bill, not least the requirement that collective redundancies would now be subject to a 30-day notification. Employees may also seek redress of up to four weeks in remuneration from the Workplace Relations Commission if the employer makes them redundant before the 30-day notification period finishes.

An improvement to the Bill that I wholeheartedly welcome would be the requirement that where a liquidator is managing the collective redundancy process in an insolvency situation, they must fulfil the employer's obligations. This goes to the heart of workforce issues in the Debenhams workers' strike, for instance, in Waterford and around the country. Many of the workers who fought for recognition of their rights will, I believe, welcome this proposed statutory change.

The Bill also proposes the establishment, on a statutory footing, of the employment law review group, an oversight group to make an assessment of employment and redundancy law and to ensure employment law remains adequately robust and fit for purpose into the future. A range of professionals are proposed to join this body, including, again, insolvency experts and employer representatives. It would be important that there is adequate balance between the interests of employers and employees in the nominations to this body.

I welcome the intention to change the aspects of the Companies Act that guides the framework in which companies and directors operate and that seeks to ensure better regulation around which commercial companies also operate. The main intention appears to be providing greater accountability in the event that assets are put beyond reach, and the proposal can provide for retrospective legal action to require a company to contribute to the debts of a subsidiary company being wound up. This appears to me again to be an initiative that has been generated by the courageous and principled stand of Debenhams workers, in particular, who could have singularly benefited from this legislation if it had already been in place.

Overall, this proposed Bill attempts to offer significant increased security for workers who are made suddenly redundant in understanding they have rights to be pursued. However, as laudable as this is as a moral employment ethic, it must also be balanced against a requirement of our economy to inspire and deliver entrepreneurship. What I mean by this is that it is often the case that companies facing cash flow squeezes may not be in a position to immediately resource their company pension funds or their statutory employment obligations. While this Bill seeks to protect workers' rights, it must also be cognisant of the need to understand the commercial landscape businesses operate in. Where companies are facing cash flow difficulties or significant revenue loss as a result of, for example, debtor failures, stock writedown, business interruptions, etc., I would like to see some direct avenue to the Department for companies seeking temporary State support, especially where pillar banks have shown no appetite to provide such support. A request such as this is far more pertinent to our domestic indigenous business sector, which is facing a difficult business horizon now and into the future.

Having access to work is as important as having proper remuneration and redundancy rights within it. Creating a new business venture and even keeping a successful business venture operating profitably is also important, but it is difficult and if often presents significant commercial risk to founders and investors. As well as having robust employment law, the Department must now engage itself in reviewing both entrepreneur supports and business support access for companies that require additional financial help from time to time, which in all likelihood is rarely available from commercial lenders. Often, where it is available, it is inadequate to the task at hand and prohibitively expensive.

We want to have a thriving economy that is the basis on which we can build an equitable, just and fair society. While I welcome that workers' rights, particularly in respect of access to redundancy, are being strengthened by this proposed legislation, as I said, we need a secondary dual focus in Government and across the Department.

We must protect our indigenous manufacturing service economy. Ultimately, if those businesses cannot survive and thrive into the future, there will be no employment on offer and, therefore, future redundancy rights of workers will be a moot issue.

I welcome the increased protections proposed for workers and their families in the event of company insolvency and liquidation. If the Bill, when finally agreed, removes the future spectre of low-paid workers camping out for months in wind and rain in an effort to vindicate their employment and redundancy rights, it will be a very good thing. Such an outcome, even of itself, would merit the passage of the legislation.

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