Bríd Smith: Debenhams Workers Offered 'Insulting' Retraining Fund

Look, I don't accept lectures from the Labour Party about the vaccine. We're all responsible TDs and we will ensure that we promote the vaccine but I don't accept lectures from the same party that lectured us about water charges but neither do I have huge criticisms of the motion but I am glad to see in it that they do mention the student nurses and why they should be paid but I want to raise more generally the idea that as Winston Churchill famously said after World War II never let a good crisis go to waste and when you google that expression one business magazine gives an explanation for it as follows in challenging times one must question the accepted reality because things are going wrong rapid answers are needed and the solution may well be found outside the usual compass and I think that that has been what we've been doing really since February or March finding solutions outside the usual compass passing legislation at rapid paces very extraordinary legislation that we would never have accepted in normal times but we don't seem to be able to accept in normal times that a group of workers all 1200 of them that were cast out of their jobs in unusual way in unusual times by Debenhams are now being told go back to school that settlement that was given to them last night we will allow a fund of 3 million to re-educate you to give you career guidance to start your own business was the most insulting answer to the most proud group of working-class women I have ever met in my life and I think they are reeling at the idea that this government could answer their 250 day struggle in that way and it would have escalated were we not in extraordinary times there would have been marches of thousands of workers up to the dial every other day of the week were it not for the lockdown and that prevented the Debenhams workers being able to generalise their dispute out to other groups of workers like the Arcadia workers who are going to be similarly impacted on so this does matter and I think we do have to raise it in these extraordinary times that this government could have gone outside the normal compass and allowed the preferential creditors of revenue and social protection to give the Debenhams workers their 2 plus 2 but no they give them 3 million to go back to school and here I want to say that tonight we are going to be voting for some extraordinary legislation that's also being pushed through in never let a good crisis go to waste 50 million will be transferred to Estonia and Estonia and Denmark to buy fantasy energy which doesn't exist but it's to acknowledge our failure to invest in renewable energies the investment limited partnership which we'll be voting on is allowing us to collude with the structures that will see massive tax evasion globally we're talking trillions of dollars here but we cannot find a measly 13 million to see the Debenhams workers have their full redundancy payment so what we need to do now is to stick that money the 3 million that the government are offering to solace who by the way outsource all the education to private firms and are pushing up the cost of even getting a safe pass for a construction site now that 3 million should be handed over to the Debenhams workers to give them a Christmas after 250 days on strike on strike and being treated in the most abysmal way not because they were made redundant like many others but because their redundancy should have fallen in to protective legislation that should have been implemented under the Duffy cattle report that is still sitting on the desk and is not being given priority that tells you the difference between how this government sees the very wealthy the elite the tiny one percent that control all the finances very broad but it's not that broad and how they see workers and in covid times we need to look after workers just like we look after everybody else just remind you of the more you