Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

In this case, it is not a matter of resourcing the ODCE. There are at least two key provisions of company law that have been in place for some time in different iterations and have been used and tested. For example, a company's assets can be pursued to reclaim moneys owed to the State through statutory redundancy and so on, but that has not happened. The law is there but it needs to be enforced and its robustness may need to be tested. It is open to any creditor to do that, and in many cases the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection or the Revenue Commissioners is the key creditor and is owed the most money. It is also open to the State to take cases to test how robust those provisions are, but that is yet to happen. I was disappointed that the Government which I supported did not take a case after what happened at Clerys, and I would have liked the State to test the various sections of company law because considerable resources are made available from the taxpayer through the Social Insurance Fund to meet the statutory redundancy payments. Too often, however, bad employers ride off into the sunset with impunity and the taxpayer is left holding the bill.