Employment (Collective Redundancies and Miscellaneous Provisions) and Companies (Amendment) Bill 2023: Second Stage

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this Bill. I am not a member of the Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, so I would not be as close as some other Members to the gestation process the Bill went through. I think it has been shown that the pre-legislative scrutiny process produces better and more robust legislation. I am certainly much wiser from having sat in and listened to the debate so far. It is a great credit to the process and the Minister’s partner process. We are talking about going from the programme for Government, through that engagement with social partners, the Company Law Review Group and Restructuring and Insolvency Ireland. That is producing legislation which, in the words of Deputy Ged Nash, is a major win for working people. It is unusual for any Bill to garner that kind of praise from a Member of the Opposition.

I welcome the provisions in this Bill. I note that, in the Minister’s speech, he said they do not arise from any one previous corporate insolvency, but many Deputies in the House have gone back to Clerys. In my constituency, Debenhams is a clear example. We spoke about TalkTalk. The situation in Iceland also affected my constituency. It might not be directly associated but I think back to the situation in Waterford Crystal. Some workers from it who were made redundant are still seeking what they believe is their entitlement to pension rights from a round of redundancies in the 1980s. I welcome the provisions.

I want to take a zoomed-out approach and then make a contribution on a specific aspect of it. We have to recognise that our economy is in a state of transition, at a pace I do not think we have seen before. That is driven by a number of factors. People have mentioned things like Brexit but there is the overarching challenge with digitisation and automation and the challenge that AI poses to many traditional jobs. There is also the challenge with trying to decarbonise our economy in a short period. There is no doubt that the workforce of today will look very different from the workforce a decade from now. There is a challenge for us to protect employees as we undergo that transition. On one hand, we have a choice to make about digitisation, automation and AI, regarding who will derive the benefit from that. We know there is an increasing move towards a return on capital versus a return on labour. If we allow all that benefit to accrue to people who already have wealth, then wealth will continue to concentrate with that select group, particularly if we allow an undermining of workers’ rights through an “Uberisation” of jobs in parts of the economy or if we allow people’s jobs to be made obsolete. We need to protect them.

We have to understand that workers are not widgets. These are the words of Esther Lynch. They are not just plug and play units in our economy. They are people in a society. We have to protect them as our economy is undergoing what will be a radical change over the next number of years. With that in mind, I want to focus on the specific aspects to do with the functions of the employment law review group. There are a number of functions, going from (a) to (g), on which the Minister, Deputy Coveney, may want to engage with his colleague, the Minister, Deputy Harris. It is not enough to just offer protection to workers on their way out the door. We also have to look to the future of workers who are affected by collective redundancies. Is there a role or function in this Bill where we can look at the upskilling and retraining of people and communities who are negatively affected by this transition in our economy, be that transition in digitalisation or, as I said, a move to the green economy?

We do not want a skills agenda that is driven solely by capital, but we have to look at the construction of human capital. We have to give people their own pathway to improve their skills and have one eye to the fact that the jobs of today may not necessarily be the jobs of tomorrow. We have to give workers that flexibility in times of redundancy while at the same time encouraging them to engage in lifelong learning and upskilling while working. It is important to have those supports in place.

The Minister said some of the people who would be involved in the review group would be members of legal accountancy and insolvency professions, workers, and employer representatives. It would be useful to have somebody with an education background and a perspective on lifelong education, not just on protecting workers as they go out the door but who will also have an eye to opening the next door that workers can go through as they move, hopefully, from one employment to another.

I will not delay the Minister much further. I welcome the provisions of the Bill and the fact that it gives increased protection, particularly that 30-day window, to workers. We have seen the likes of Debenhams and Iceland where workers have not been afforded that. I also welcome that the Bill states, “Where an employer or a responsible person proposes to create collective redundancies, he or she shall, with a view to reaching an agreement, initiate consultations with employees’ representatives.” That has been lacking. People have received word late in the day and found themselves in situations where they felt they needed to lock themselves in with produce to mitigate against the transfer of those items and the tactical liquidation that Deputy O’Reilly referred to.

There is great progress in this Bill. I am happy to see it move from the programme for Government, through all those Stages and to the point where I think we have robust legislation. I will engage with the Minister about the potential for amendments along the lines that I raised.

I am very happy to be able to endorse the Bill on this Stage.