Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2022-12-13
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

On 9 April 2020, more than 1,000 Debenhams workers received an email telling them they had lost their jobs. The researchers who are making a film about the Debenhams dispute have just uncovered evidence that suggests very strongly that the three vulture funds and a consortium including Bank of Ireland had orchestrated this liquidation precisely one year before in order to get around Irish law. That consortium, including Bank of Ireland, I stress, loaded €200 million of debt onto Debenhams Ireland and the Norwegian branch, which branch was later released from that debt, so the entire debt was loaded onto Debenhams. That debt, however, could not have been enforced against Debenhams Ireland unless one year had passed. Exactly one year to the day after the debt was fixed, the 1,000 workers were sacked. Involved in this was a company headed up by somebody who is an ex-KPMG employee. KPMG was later appointed by Debenhams as the liquidator.
This poses very serious questions about the orchestrated sacrifice of 1,000 jobs in Debenhams and raises questions about what the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment knew when it was notified by KPMG of the liquidation and of the tactical and cynical manipulation of, essentially, the Debenhams group to sacrifice 1,000 workers.
I have sent the Taoiseach the material because I cannot go through it all here and I ask him very seriously to look into this.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-12-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:25+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-12-13