Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2020-11-04
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

The Taoiseach has an invitation to meet the shop stewards today to hear directly from them. They are also holding an online mass meeting on Thursday. The Taoiseach is also invited to that and they would be very happy for him to attend to hear from them.
Successive Governments failed to legislate for Duffy-Cahill and now the Debenhams workers find themselves in a situation where a company is once again hiding assets. They are furious that the Government, Revenue and the liquidator show no interest in the fact that the directors of Debenhams Ireland stated explicitly that the online business worth €30 million in 2018, and almost certainly more in 2019, has not been pursued while Debenhams says it has nothing, even though the balance sheet that it put forward in court during pre-liquidation showed a balance of €30 million as at the end of 2019. That is three times more than would be necessary to pay the workers their just redundancy yet neither the Government nor the liquidator shows any interest in pursuing these assets from a company that swore in court that it had those assets but then, a few weeks later, magicked those assets over to Britain, pretending they did not exist. They are asking the State to go after those assets to pay the just redundancy as well as Revenue the money that Debenhams owes them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-11-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-11-04