Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, to the House and thank him for coming here today.

My question relates to the status of the review of the Company Law Review Group, CLRG, on the recommendations of the Cahill Duffy report on collective redundancies. What is the Government currently doing with the employment recommendations in the report? I do not need to tell the Minister of State that five years have elapsed since the report landed into his current Department. Obviously the report was a response to the situation that arose with Clerys at the time. We know that with many other companies going into liquidation, and most notably Debenhams last year and Arcadia, and more coming down the tracks we now need to see action by the Government. Last year, we had a lot of commitments and soothing words that the Government was seriously considering the matter.

On 4 November 2020, the two authors of the report, Mr. Kevin Duffy and Ms Nessa Cahill, came before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and spoke about what they believed needed to be done to implement the recommendations of their report. In particular, they said that the recommendations in the employment law sphere could be implemented, needed to be implemented and that there was no need to do anything on the company law side. The Government in its wisdom decided to ask the Company Law Review Group what company law measures needed to be undertaken and, almost six months on, we still await the review. At this point in time there is yet another delay and distraction in the much needed implementation of the recommendations in the Cahill Duffy Report.

We are all very aware of a permanent contraction in some areas. We know that there are redundancies coming down the tracks in the retail sector and other sectors for which the Government now needs to be ready. I believe that if we had the report in place we could have saved some of the heartache experienced by the workers at Debenhams and the many days they spent outside day after night trying to fight for what was due to them. In particular, there would have been advanced consultation on collective redundancies, which is recommendation No. 1 of the Cahill Duffy report, the strengthening of the ability of the State to recover payments from the insolvency fund, which is recommendation No. 4, and increasing compensation to the affected workers by recognising the terms of their collective agreement, which is recommendation No. 6.

In short, if the recommendations of the report had been implemented before last March or, indeed, now for the thousands of workers who may find themselves in a similar situation that there is a mechanism for recognising the collectively bargained ex gratiapayments that are inbuilt into their collective agreement, and a mechanism for paying that out via the insolvency fund but claiming it back from what remains of the liquidation process.

I ask the Government to get a move on with the report because we cannot afford any delay. It will be an appalling indictment of the Government if more workers find themselves in a situation where they are left without their fair compensation package arising from a liquidation if the Government has failed to act.