Brian Stanley: Welcomes Insolvency Bill, Urges 6-Year Claims Window

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue of workers' rights. I have long been involved in campaigns, going back over the last 40 years with workers, and as a worker myself on many occasions, trying to get our basic rights. I think I want to broadly welcome the Bill Minister. It does make the necessary changes in terms of the insolvency payment scheme, but it is coming late, and I welcome the fact that it will cater for the situation at the moment regarding wages, sick pay, holiday pay, minimum notice, entitlements, pension contributions, that while they are in the insolvency payment scheme, in the case of where the employer does not deem themselves to be ceased trading, workers have lost out, and thousands of workers have lost out over the last 41 years on that. So it is coming a bit late. I think that the time limit has been mentioned earlier. There is a request there from the largest union in the States in relation to that, that would be extended from two years to six years, and I would support that. The Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that the relevant EU directive was not transposed properly to provide for this situation, where the employer ceased the trading but has not formally ceased their business, and that that, you know, where it has not been declared bankrupt or gone into liquidation, it has left workers in an awful position, and there are a lot of examples of that. But the timeline for me even moving this forward, because the heads of the bill and draft bill was, that was started in 2000, 2023. Last year, in October, the pre-legislative scrutiny was completed by the committee. The provisions of the bill, I think that the, you know, and I have read the, all the information on it, that the new process for the applicants to have the employer deemed insolvent, where the employer ceased the trading without going through the formal wind-up, and that is welcome, Minister, they can claim the, they can claim under the scheme, the insolvency payment scheme, and provide a time limit of application window to cover the historical cases impacted by the Supreme Court judgment, to cover the period 1983, up to the deadline of whenever we enact the bill here in the House. But the employees only have two years to make the application, and I would just ask for that to be extended, given the fact that some employees would be in advanced years now, who were affected by this, some of them are, you know, are being, may have emigrated, as has been mentioned earlier by Deputy Healey. You know, I think also one gap in it that has been closed, and it is welcome Minister to ensure that employees of, of former sole traders in the insolvency arrangements are defined in the Persons and Insolvency Act 2012, that they are covered now by the scheme, and to amend the Employment Equality Act 1998, to ensure that any court awards for gender discrimination are covered by the scheme as well, and to update how the salary limit is applied to all payments. So, you know, it is broadly welcome there are some changes we will be looking for. I think that the, it is important that we protect workers. Some progress has been made, and I acknowledge any time there is progress being made, but, you know, we have had situations where, you know, a lot of workers have lost out in this, and it has typically been low-ped workers. You know, the Debenhans case was a classic case where, you know, over a thousand workers there, but there has been a lot of other lesser known cases where people have lost their jobs. The employer didn't, the employer didn't formally wind up the business, and it didn't formally cease trading. Company loyalty, people having given decades of work and service to a company, that seemed to count for nothing, and in some cases the employers magically spring up under another company name within a very, very short period of time, and they seem to be flying it again. That is always very disappointing, whereas the workers who have worked for maybe two, three or four decades with a company, they are left high and dry. So I would say to you as well that we need to do further work and there is further business to be done in terms of workers' rights. We need to get to a living wage in this country. We have a minimum wage, but we need to go further on that. The cost of living here is very, very high compared to other EU countries. The auto-enrolment in the pension schemes, that has now been delayed again. So we are, on the one hand, we have a large group of workers who are heading for pension age. The only pension entitlements will be the state pension. A lot, an increased number of those workers will be in private rented accommodation, and this is going to be a real fix, Minister and Count Corley, because private rented accommodation will be totally unaffordable for pensioners. I have already dealt with a couple of cases where pensioners are living in private rented accommodation, and you know, the state pension alone just will not do it. In one case I dealt with, they had an employment pension and the state pension, and they managed, they struggled, but they managed to keep going until they got housed by the local authority. But a lot of employees, former and former employees, won't have that. So it is important that the pension scheme is advanced. The Minister mentioned that a trade union official can make the case on behalf of the workers, but the majority of workers in the private sector are not represented by a trade union. Trade union membership, the percentage of workers in the private sector that are represented by a trade union is at an all-time low, if you compare it to the 1970s and 1980s. We need to look at why is this the case, and there are a number of reasons why, Minister. The fact is that employers out there, many employers, I am not saying all of them, many of them are making it very difficult for workers to join a trade union. They are targeted when they try and join a trade union. Some of them end up losing their jobs, they end up being bullied out and targeted, and all sorts of tricks are played on them to make life difficult for them. We also have the promotion of a Mayfane culture that in society generally that we can all do these things on our own, but we cannot. The only strength that workers have is having a combination. There is no legal right to collective bargaining, and no legal right to join a trade union. Here is another example. While the Minister says in the scheme that a trade union can get involved here on behalf of the workers, the majority of workers will not be represented by a trade union. I am hoping that changes. But imagine if the members, imagine if Hawleyers, for example, were told that they could not combine, they could not combine and make their case collectively. Which is to do, and that is the right to do it, and I recognise the right to do it. Or the local, or Chambers of Commerce members, if they were told that you cannot combine into a Chamber of Commerce and make your case to the County Council or the Government. I beg, imagine telling them that you have to come to us individually. We are not going to talk to your representatives or Ismay or any of them. There would be a huge hullabaloo in this House and everywhere else over it, and across the media. So, you know, this bill is welcome, broadly supported, but I would ask you that this issue of trade union membership, and it is in the programme for Government, as I recall, I think it is in the programme for Government this time around, and that needs to be advanced. Workers, particularly low-paid workers, are at the bottom rung of the ladder, and the only protection to have is in combination, and it is a basic right. We are lagging way behind the rest of Europe with this, so we are way behind the rest of Europe. We must give workers the right to be represented by a trade union. You know, this thing in Irish law, Irish solution, always sure you can join a trade union. It is very difficult to join a trade union in a lot of employment places, a lot of companies in the state, and the facts are, it is no good being in a union, a little use being in a union, if you are not going to be, not going to have a right to be represented by that union. And in the private sector, we must change the dial that workers, where there are more than 10 workers in a company, that they have a right to combine together, to be represented. And a lot of good employers do that, and that is fine, but we need to look for that to be an absolute right in law in this state. And I would urge you, Minister and your department, to go further with this. Thank you, Deputy. Thank you, Deputy.