Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

I too welcome my socialist colleague Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett back into action. I welcome also the election of a socialist in New York, the belly of the beast of capitalism, Zohran Mamdani.

I welcome the Fastway Couriers workers to the Public Gallery today. Perhaps it will be third time lucky because two TDs have already asked the Minister about this. I ask him to look them in the eye and tell them what they are to do for the next 30 days. They have been blindsided by their company. They were told they were making vast profits and then they were dumped. They are told they are not allowed to sign on for any social security measures for 30 days or they risk losing their redundancy and the wages they are owed. They are caught in a complete double bind. We need a statutory instrument to get around this. The law needs to be changed but they do not have time to wait for that . Elysian Capital, the big venture capitalist company that seems to own it, pulled the plug on this company coming up to the busiest month of the year for couriers, quite amazingly, given it could have recouped some of the debts it was owed. I do not know if the Minister is going to investigate that.

See this speech in context