Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Pringle. I do not know whether I welcome the Bill. It is an indictment of our political system that it has taken more than eight years to address the injustices the Clerys workers faced in 2015. Since then, we have seen the Debenhams workers left out to dry due to a failure of this House to act on collective redundancies. More recently, we have seen the disgraceful treatment of the Iceland workers by their boss, Naeem Maniar. These are just a few examples of the failures by successive Governments to legislative to protect workers. We all knew there was a problem. Workers who lost their livelihood received little to no compensation because of this issue. Still, no action was taken. This Bill should have come a lot sooner.

I support the measures in the Bill to implement the Duffy Cahill report, apart from these provisions being far too late for the Clerys, Debenhams or Iceland workers. Without context, this is not a bad Bill, which is why I am not sure whether I welcome it. It is better than what we had before. However, it is, in effect, attempting to fiddle around the edges of an issue that has a clear and simple solution. On 4 October, I asked during Questions on Policy or Legislation if the Government would make it a priority to progress the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021, known as the Debenhams Bill, or introduce its own legislation to ensure workers are paid wages, sick pay, holiday pay and agreed redundancy payments where the employer files for bankruptcy or uses tactical insolvency. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, replied that he planned to introduce new legislation on collective redundancies in the next few weeks. He said it would not deal with all the issues I raised but certainly would deal with some of them. In fact, the Bill has not covered a lot of the issues that should be covered.

There is a simple solution to this issue. Workers can only be fully protected in collective redundancies if they are given preferential creditor status. Our Bill, the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill, known as the Debenhams Bill, would bring Ireland in line with many other countries, such as Greece, France and Portugal. I do not know why the Government seems to think Irish workers are less important than Greek, French or Portuguese workers. It has done everything it can to tie up our Bill in the Dáil, as it does with may other Bills, despite the support it received from many in this House and in the trade union movement. During pre-legislative scrutiny, our proposals received extensive support from Mandate and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU. Instead of supporting those proposals, the Government has introduced a Bill that ignores the most important solution to the problem and does not even include all the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The recent situation with the Iceland workers is a clear example of how weak our labour laws are in this country. After months of repeated reports of systematic non-payment of wages, sick pay and holiday pay, we saw the company loaded with debt and run into the ground by Naeem Maniar. The Government stood by and let this wage theft happen, despite multiple appeals by the union representing the workers, the Independent Workers Union, for intervention to protect them. There was no support for Iceland workers. They walked away with nothing but statutory redundancy while the owners of the company got to walk away with their debts cleared.

This law is weak and, unfortunately, has no teeth. A real look is needed at the legal loopholes and tricks companies and their owners can pull to hide assets and cheat workers and other creditors. I am glad there is a tightening in the Bill of company law with regard to liability. However, we will see more workers cheated and left out to dry until we put a system in place where there is zero tolerance for moving debts or assets, preferential status for workers and enforcement with real teeth to hold people to account for contravention. I will support the Bill and I am sure I will support many of the amendments that need to be made to it. I reiterate that it does not tackle the real issue. It does not give workers preferential creditor status. Our system will continue to allow workers to be let down, cheated and left out to dry until we legislate to put them first in collective redundancies.

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